How To Create Password Protected Pdf File In Java

iText is very powerful library. It is used extensively to create PDF files in Java applications. Although not free, iText is the de-fecto Java library for working with PDF files. It has been extensively used in different Java related products for generating and manipulating PDF files. Let us see how iText can be used to set password protection (encryption) to a PDF file. Also how to read an encrypted PDF file in Java. For this we are using our Generate PDF in Java using iText tutorial. You might want to have a look into that tutorial to have an overview of iText and its different APIs that can be used for PDF generation. To set encryption in iText following API can be used.

                      String USER_PASS =              "Hello123";  String OWNER_PASS =              "Owner123";  PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, file);  writer.setEncryption(USER_PASS.getBytes(), OWNER_PASS.getBytes(), 		PdfWriter.ALLOW_PRINTING, PdfWriter.ENCRYPTION_AES_128);                      
                      Code language:            Java            (            java            )

Thus.setEncryption() method sets password protection to any PDF file. Before we get started with code, we need few JAR files. iText internally uses bouncycastle.org library to encrypt the PDF files. We will need following JAR files in addition to iText JAR.

itextpdf-5.2.1.jar
bcmail-jdk16-1.46.jar
bcprov-jdk16-1.46.jar
bctsp-jdk16-1.46.jar

You can download all these JARs along with the demo source code at the end of this tutorial. Now following is the Java code to Generate a PDF file and set Password protection to it.

                                    package              net.viralpatel.pdf;              import              java.io.File;              import              java.io.FileOutputStream;              import              java.io.OutputStream;              import              java.util.Date;              import              com.itextpdf.text.Document;              import              com.itextpdf.text.Paragraph;              import              com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter;              public                              class                GeneratePDF              {              private              static              String USER_PASS =              "Hello123";              private              static              String OWNER_PASS =              "Owner123";                              public                static                void                main                (String[] args)              {              try              { 			 			OutputStream file =              new              FileOutputStream(new              File("D:\\Test.pdf"));  			Document document =              new              Document(); 			PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, file);  			writer.setEncryption(USER_PASS.getBytes(), OWNER_PASS.getBytes(), 					PdfWriter.ALLOW_PRINTING, PdfWriter.ENCRYPTION_AES_128);  			document.open(); 			document.add(new              Paragraph("Hello World, iText")); 			document.add(new              Paragraph(new              Date().toString()));  			document.close(); 			file.close();  		}              catch              (Exception e) {  			e.printStackTrace(); 		} 	} }                      
                      Code language:            Java            (            java            )

Thus we used the same steps to generate PDF file that we used in previous tutorial. Just added one linewriter.setEncryption() to set password to generated PDF. Note that in setEncryption() method, we passes several arguments. First two parameters are the password values in bytes. We passed Hello123 and Owner123 as password values. Also the next argument is permission you want to give to user. Following are several permission values.

PdfWriter.ALLOW_PRINTING PdfWriter.ALLOW_ASSEMBLY PdfWriter.ALLOW_COPY PdfWriter.ALLOW_DEGRADED_PRINTING PdfWriter.ALLOW_FILL_IN PdfWriter.ALLOW_MODIFY_ANNOTATIONS PdfWriter.ALLOW_MODIFY_CONTENTS PdfWriter.ALLOW_SCREENREADERS

Code language: Java ( java )

You can provide multiple permissions by ORing different values. For examplePdfWriter.ALLOW_PRINTING | PdfWriter.ALLOW_COPY. The last parameter is the type of encryption you want to use to encrypt PDF. Following are several allowed values.

PdfWriter.ENCRYPTION_AES_128 PdfWriter.ENCRYPTION_AES_256

Code language: Java ( java )

Download Source Code

Java_iText_PDF_Password.zip (8.9 MB)