CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phppdf
Erik Baars
Erik Baars

Reputation: 2298

How to validate a PDF?

I have a PDF file, generated in php (using tFDF) that opens fine in chrome, firefox and safari. But not in Edge or Adobe acrobat reader. Edge displays a white page, and Adobe reports "An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not be able to display the page correctly".

Is it possible to retrieve what that error might be? The PDF file uses some embedded fonts that might be the problem, but im not sure.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 908

Answers (1)

LSerni
LSerni

Reputation: 57453

You can use Ghostscript like this (paths are pure conjectures):

# On Linux
gs -o /dev/null -sDEVICE=nullpage -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE /home/ebaars/sample.pdf

# On Windows, using gswin32

gswin32 -o nul -sDEVICE=nullpage -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE C:\Users\Eric\Desktop\Sample.pdf

Or you can use iText (that is, pdftk) and ask to, say, (un)compress the file and reparse it to another file. Meanwhile, the library will performs the checks.

You can also check out this other answer.

update

This error, "'0,686 is not an operator" -- it means that it found a number where it expected an operator. I assume by "tFDF" you mean "tcPDF"? I suspect - I might be wrong - that we're looking at a i18n error, where a number such as 2/3, which should be "0.66666", is represented by the server code with a decimal comma, making it what the PDF interpreter believes a list ("0,666").

To be sure, I would either need the PDF - I would uncompress it with iText, then rewrite 0,686 etc. as 0.686 etc., then see whether this way it works or not - or the exact PHP code that generated the file, plus the configuration of the server (to verify whether locale settings are appropriate).

My guess is that it is a library bug. Check software versions, in case it is possible to update the code and maybe get rid of the problem that way.

I have met this bug several times, since I am from Italy and "one thousand and one cent" is written here as "1.000,01" or "1'000,01" instead of "1000.01".

Upvotes: 1

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