Java - Extract Attachments from PDF to Disk

PDF format carries embedded attachments and that attachment can be anything. It can be a PDF itself, Excel, Word, PowerPoint document, or image files. In this article, I am going to show you how to extract attachments from a PDF document and save them to disk by using Spire.PDF for Java.

Below is a screenshot of the input document.

Installing Spire.Pdf.jar

If you create a Maven project, you can easily import the jar in your application using the following configurations. For non-Maven projects, download the jar file from this link and add it as a dependency in your application.

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>com.e-iceblue</id>
        <name>e-iceblue</name>
        <url>http://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId> e-iceblue </groupId>
        <artifactId>spire.pdf</artifactId>
        <version>3.12.6</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Using the code

import com.spire.pdf.PdfDocument;
import com.spire.pdf.attachments.PdfAttachmentCollection;

import java.io.*;

public class ExtractAttachmentsFromPDF {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        //Create a PdfDocument object
        PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument();

        //Load the sample pdf document
        pdf.loadFromFile("C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Desktop\\Attachments.pdf");

        //Get the attachment collection from pdf
        PdfAttachmentCollection attachments = pdf.getAttachments();

        //Loop through the attachments
        for (int i = 0; i < attachments.getCount(); i++) {

            //Create a new file based on the name of the specific attachment
            File file = new File("attachments/" + attachments.get(i).getFileName());

            //Write data to the new file
            OutputStream output = new FileOutputStream(file);
            BufferedOutputStream bufferedOutput = new BufferedOutputStream(output);
            bufferedOutput.write(attachments.get(i).getData());
            bufferedOutput.close();
        }
    }
}

Output