itext/itext-dotnet

iText Core/Community (previously known as iTextSharp) is a high-performance, battle-tested library that allows you to create, adapt, inspect and maintain PDF documents, allowing you to add PDF functionality to your software projects with ease. It is also available for Java.

The key features of iText Core/Community are:

• Core library:
  • PDF creation with the use of our layout engine
  • PDF manipulation, e.g. merging multiple PDFs into one, adding new content, ...
  • PDF digital signing
  • PDF form creation and manipulation
  • Working with PDF/A documents
  • Working with PDF/UA documents
  • FIPS-compliant cryptography
  • Barcode generation
  • SVG support
• Addons:
  • Converting XML/HTML & CSS to PDF repo, info
  • Perform OCR on images and PDF documents repo, info
  • Redacting sensitive information in PDF documents repo, info
  • Support for international character sets (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Thai, ...) info
  • Optimize PDF documents for reduced file size, and increased performance info
  • Flattening XFA documents info
  • PDF debugging repo, info

Want to discover what's possible? Head over to our Demo Lab! It contains a collection of demo applications ready to use online!

Getting started

The easiest way to get started is to use NuGet, just execute the following install command in the folder of your project:

dotnet add package itext --version <REPLACE_WITH_DESIRED_ITEXT_VERSION>
dotnet add package itext.bouncy-castle-adapter --version <REPLACE_WITH_DESIRED_ITEXT_VERSION>

For more advanced use cases, please refer to the Installation guidelines. You can also build iText Community from source.

Hello PDF!

The following example shows how easy it is to create a simple PDF document:

using iText.Kernel.Pdf;
using iText.Layout;
using iText.Layout.Element;

namespace HelloPdf {
    class Program {
        static void Main(string[] args) {
            using var document = new Document(new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter("helloworld-pdf.pdf")));
            document.Add(new Paragraph("Hello World!"));
        }
    }
}

Examples

For more advanced examples, refer to our Knowledge Base or the main Examples repo. You can find C# equivalents to the Java Signing examples here, though the Java code is very similar since they have the same API.

Some of the output PDF files will be incorrectly displayed by the GitHub previewer, so be sure to download them to see the correct results.

Description	Link
Basic layout
Change text properties	C#, PDF
Creating a simple table	C#, PDF
Add an image to a PDF document	C#, PDF
Create a list	C#, PDF
Add a watermark	C#, PDF
Add links to navigate within a document	C#, PDF
Create a popup annotation	C#, PDF
Change font	C#
Add form fields	C#
General document settings
Change page size and margin	C#, PDF
Write PDF to byte array instead of to disk	C#
Change page rotation	C#, PDF
Add header and footer	C#, PDF
Add dynamic page margins	C#, PDF
Add footnotes	C#, PDF
Merge documents	C#, PDF
Flatten annotations	C#
PDF/UA, PDF/A
Create PDF/UA document	C#, PDF
Create PDF/A-3 document	C#
Create PDF/A-4 document	C#
Create WTPDF document	C#
Create ZUGFeRD/Factur-X document	C#, PDF
Digital signatures
Sign PDF document	C#, PDF
Customize signature appearance	C#, PDFs
Sign PDF document with PaDES Profile	C#, PDFs
Two-phase signing	C#, PDFs
Signature validation	C#
Signing using PQC algorithms (experimental)	C#, PDFs
Custom HTML tag for signature	C#, HTML, PDF
FIPS
Enable FIPS	C#
FIPS SHA3 example	C#
SVG
Convert SVG to a PDF	C#
Convert SVG to a PDF using layout	C#
Convert SVG as string to PDF	C#
Convert SVG to a PdfPage	C#
Convert SVG as XObject	C#
Convert SVG to a PDF with pdfCalligraph	C#
Convert HTML and CSS to PDF	Link to repo
Convert simple HTML doc to PDF	C#
OCR images or PDFs	Link to repo
OCR images and create PDF	Using ONNX models, using Tesseract 4
Make PDF searchable	Using ONNX models, using Tesseract 4
OCR images to txt file	Using ONNX models, using Tesseract 4
Secure redaction of content	Link to repo
Redacting content	C#
Redact based on regex	C#
Support complex writing systems	Link to docs
Add Arabic text	C#, PDF
Optimizing PDFs	Link to docs
Reduce size of PDF	C#
XFA flattening	Link to docs
Flatten an XFA document	C#
RUPS	Link to repo
Debug a PDF	Latest release

FAQs, tutorials, etc.

Check out the iText Knowledge Base for the iText Jump-start tutorial and other tutorials, FAQs and more. For specific information and examples relating to digital signatures and iText, make sure to check the Digital Signatures Hub.

Many common questions have already been answered on Stack Overflow, so make sure to also check there.

Contributing

Many people have contributed to iText Core/Community over the years. If you've found a bug, a mistake in documentation, or have a hot new feature you want to implement, we welcome your contributions.

Small changes or fixes can be submitted as a Pull Request, while for major changes we request you contact us at community@apryse.com so we can better coordinate our efforts and prevent duplication of work.

Please read our Contribution Guidelines for details on code submissions, coding rules, and more.

Licensing

iText is dual licensed as AGPL/Commercial software.

AGPL is a free/open-source software license, however, this doesn't mean the software is gratis!

The AGPL is a copyleft license, which means that any derivative work must also be licensed under the same terms. If you’re using iText in software or a service which cannot comply with the AGPL terms, we have a commercial license available that exempts you from such obligations.

Contact Sales for more info.