[PDFBOX-506] PDFBox can't parse PDF documents from jstor.org

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 1.3.1
• Assignee: Adam Nichols
• Reporter: Dave Engberg
• Created: 19/Aug/09 19:29
• Updated: 26/Oct/10 09:33
• Resolved: 27/Aug/10 16:34

Description

The academic repository JStor makes papers available via PDF format. The PDFs give this origin information:
Content creator: JstorPdfGenerator v1.0
PDF producer: iText 2.0.6 (by lowagie.com)

These PDFs open fine in Acrobat, Preview, FoxIt, etc., but they throw an exception in PDFBox:

Exception in thread "main" java.io.IOException: Error: Expected to read '%%EOF' instead started reading '1'
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdfparser.BaseParser.readExpectedString(BaseParser.java:1005)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdfparser.PDFParser.parseObject(PDFParser.java:456)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdfparser.PDFParser.parse(PDFParser.java:172)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.load(PDDocument.java:739)
at org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument.load(PDDocument.java:706)
at org.apache.pdfbox.PDFDebugger.parseDocument(PDFDebugger.java:393)
at org.apache.pdfbox.PDFDebugger.readPDFFile(PDFDebugger.java:369)
at org.apache.pdfbox.PDFDebugger.main(PDFDebugger.java:355)

I traced through the code, and it appears that PDFBox rejects these because they contain a 'startxref' that is not followed by a %%EOF two lines later:

...
startxref
613364
1 0 obj
...

Here's a small patch that will accept files that are missing the EOF after the startxref:

Index: src/main/java/org/apache/pdfbox/pdfparser/PDFParser.java
===================================================================
— src/main/java/org/apache/pdfbox/pdfparser/PDFParser.java (revision 802578)
+++ src/main/java/org/apache/pdfbox/pdfparser/PDFParser.java (working copy)
@@ -453,11 +453,9 @@
{
parseStartXref();
//verify that EOF exists

• String eof = readExpectedString( "%%EOF" );
• if( eof.indexOf( "%%EOF" )== -1 && !pdfSource.isEOF() )
• {
• throw new IOException( "expected='%%EOF' actual='" + eof + "' next=" + readString() +
• " next=" +readString() );
  + int c = pdfSource.peek();
  + if (c == '%') { + readExpectedString("%%EOF"); }

  isEndOfFile = true;
  }

Issue Links

• is duplicated by: PDFBOX-311 Expected to read '%%EOF' instead started reading 'e'
• is related to: PDFBOX-802 Better handle corrupt/missing %%EOF flags at the end of a file