Qore PDF Module

Introduction

The pdf module provides PDF creation, reading, editing, and rendering support for Qore using QPDF and PoDoFo, with optional PDFium integration for rendering and text extraction.

Requirements

• Qore 2.0+
• CMake 3.5+
• C++17 compiler
• QPDF (required)
• PoDoFo (required; bundled by default)
• PDFium (optional; required in Qorus CI)

OS Packages

The bundled PoDoFo build requires common graphics/font libraries. Install these packages before building. PDFium is optional; there is no MacPorts PDFium port.

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y \
  cmake pkg-config qpdf libqpdf-dev libfreetype-dev \
  libssl-dev libxml2-dev libfontconfig1-dev libpng-dev \
  libjpeg-turbo8-dev libtiff-dev zlib1g-dev

PDFium (optional): not packaged in standard Ubuntu repos; provide a prebuilt libpdfium and pass -DENABLE_PDFIUM=ON -DPDFIUM_INCLUDE_DIR=... -DPDFIUM_LIBRARY=..., or use -DENABLE_PDFIUM=OFF.

Alpine:

sudo apk add --no-cache \
  cmake pkgconfig qpdf qpdf-dev freetype-dev \
  openssl-dev libxml2-dev fontconfig-dev libpng-dev \
  libjpeg-turbo-dev tiff-dev zlib-dev

PDFium (optional): not in Alpine repos; provide a prebuilt libpdfium and pass -DENABLE_PDFIUM=ON -DPDFIUM_INCLUDE_DIR=... -DPDFIUM_LIBRARY=..., or use -DENABLE_PDFIUM=OFF.

Fedora:

sudo dnf install -y \
  cmake pkgconf-pkg-config qpdf qpdf-devel freetype-devel \
  openssl-devel libxml2-devel fontconfig-devel libpng-devel \
  libjpeg-turbo-devel libtiff-devel zlib-devel

MacPorts (no PDFium port available):

sudo port install \
  cmake pkgconfig qpdf freetype openssl3 libxml2 fontconfig libpng \
  libjpeg-turbo tiff zlib

Building

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

To use the system PoDoFo instead of the bundled source:

cmake .. -DUSE_BUNDLED_PODOFO=OFF

To disable PDFium features:

cmake .. -DENABLE_PDFIUM=OFF

Quick Start

#!/usr/bin/qore

%requires pdf

# Create a PDF with two blank pages
PdfWriter writer();
writer.addBlankPage();
writer.addBlankPage();
writer.save("example.pdf");

# Read metadata and page count
PdfReader reader("example.pdf");
int pages = reader.pageCount();

# Merge PDFs
PdfDocument merged = PdfDocument::merge(("example.pdf", "example.pdf"));
merged.save("merged.pdf");

Adding Images and Text

The PdfEditor class allows adding images and styled text to existing PDFs:

%requires pdf

# Add an image to a PDF
PdfEditor editor("document.pdf");
editor.drawImage(0, "logo.png", 100.0, 700.0, 200.0, 100.0);
editor.save("with_logo.pdf");

# Add styled text
hash<auto> style = {
    "font": {"family": "Helvetica", "size": 24.0, "bold": True},
    "color": {"hex": "#FF0000"},
};
editor.drawText(0, "Hello World", 100.0, 500.0, style);
editor.save("with_text.pdf");

Data Provider

The module includes a PDF data provider for integration with Qore's data provider framework.

%requires PdfDataProvider

AbstractDataProvider dp = DataProvider::getFactoryObjectFromStringEx("pdf{}/document/merge");

hash<auto> result = dp.doRequest({
    "output_path": "merged.pdf",
    "inputs": ("a.pdf", "b.pdf"),
});

Example qdp actions:

# Document operations
qdp 'pdf{}/document/create' output_path=out.pdf,page_count=2
qdp 'pdf{}/document/metadata' input_path=in.pdf,output_path=out.pdf,metadata='{"title":"Updated"}'
qdp 'pdf{}/document/rotate' input_path=in.pdf,output_path=rotated.pdf,pages='(0)',degrees=90
qdp 'pdf{}/document/merge' inputs='("a.pdf","b.pdf")',output_path=merged.pdf

# Add images to pages
qdp 'pdf{}/document/add-image' input_path=in.pdf,output_path=out.pdf,image='{"image_path":"logo.png","position":{"preset":"center"}}'

# Add styled text
qdp 'pdf{}/document/add-text' input_path=in.pdf,output_path=out.pdf,text='{"text":"Hello","position":{"x":100,"y":100}}'

# Add watermarks (text or image)
qdp 'pdf{}/document/add-watermark' input_path=in.pdf,output_path=out.pdf,watermark='{"type":"text","text":"DRAFT","opacity":0.3}'

# Add signature fields
qdp 'pdf{}/document/add-signature-field' input_path=in.pdf,output_path=out.pdf,signature='{"label":"Signature"}'

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

This project bundles PoDoFo (LGPL-2.0-or-later). See third_party/podofo/COPYING for details.

Copyright

Copyright 2026 Qore Technologies, s.r.o.