PDFStamper fails on several PDF files (itext 5.5.1

I'm trying to fill PDF forms with data and got PDFStamper (itext version 5.5.1) to work with several PDF files, but on some it always fails. Sample code:

PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(new FileInputStream("C:/Temp/source.pdf"));
PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, new FileOutputStream("C:/Temp/temp.pdf"));
stamper.close();

Two different error messages until now, first one:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.AbstractMethodError: javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory.setFeature(Ljava/lang/String;Z)V
    at com.itextpdf.xmp.impl.XMPMetaParser.createDocumentBuilderFactory(XMPMetaParser.java:423)
    at com.itextpdf.xmp.impl.XMPMetaParser.<clinit>(XMPMetaParser.java:71)
    at com.itextpdf.xmp.XMPMetaFactory.parseFromBuffer(XMPMetaFactory.java:167)
    at com.itextpdf.xmp.XMPMetaFactory.parseFromBuffer(XMPMetaFactory.java:153)
    at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfStamperImp.close(PdfStamperImp.java:337)
    at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfStamper.close(PdfStamper.java:208)

Second:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
[...]
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class com.itextpdf.xmp.impl.XMPMetaParser
    at com.itextpdf.xmp.XMPMetaFactory.parseFromBuffer(XMPMetaFactory.java:167)
    at com.itextpdf.xmp.XMPMetaFactory.parseFromBuffer(XMPMetaFactory.java:153)
    at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfStamperImp.close(PdfStamperImp.java:337)
    at com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfStamper.close(PdfStamper.java:208)

The error messages vary, maybe because of different environments (full application vs. test class, but both using itext-5.5.1.jar).

One of the working PDF form was created using OpenOffice Writer, which produced a version 1.4 (Acrobat 5.x) document. The failing PDF form was created using Acrobat Distiller 7.0.5, pdf version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.x). I already tried to convert it down to version 1.4/5.x without luck.

Any ideas?

回答1:

We had the same problem in our project, where we used FOP for generating PDF and iText for PDF signing.

FOP has a dependency on the xercesImpl:xerces jar. This jar is important for JRE <= 1.4 but it isn't needed in the JRE>1.4 and works without it (more information on JDK 1.6 and Xerces?).

Ps: Check that you do not have the xerces library on classpath, if so remove it.

回答2:

I had the same problem (with xerces), I could fix it by adding an exclusion in my dependency:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>net.sf.barcode4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>barcode4j-fop-ext-complete</artifactId>
        <version>2.0</version>
        <type>jar</type>
        <exclusions>
            <exclusion>
                <groupId>xerces</groupId>
                <artifactId>xercesImpl</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
    </dependency>