adding sticky notes in an existing pdf using java itext or pdfbox

Question

I am trying to add sticky notes to an existing pdf. please help with any suggestion with itext or pdfbox.

I have tried using pdfbox but couldn't find any solution. Please help...

Here is the sample pdf of what type of sticky notes I want: http://www.pdfill.com/example/pdf_commenting_new.pdf

Answer 1

I found the solution.

According to the PDF specification, 'a text annotation represents a “sticky note” attached to a point in the PDF document.' Thus, neither the class PDAnnotationTextMarkup nor the subtype SUB_TYPE_POLYGON appears to match your requirements. Instead, you should use the PDAnnotationText class. As an aside, PDAnnotationTextMarkup is documented (JavaDocs) to be the abstract class that represents a text markup annotation. While it is not actually declared abstract, that characterization should make clear that it probably does not work without further ado.

so I used the below code and it worked like magic for me

PDRectangle position = new PDRectangle();
position.setUpperRightX(textPosition.getX());
position.setUpperRightY(ph - textPosition.getY());

position.setLowerLeftX(textPosition.getX()-4);
position.setLowerLeftY(ph - textPosition.getY());
PDGamma colourBlue = new PDGamma();
colourBlue.setB(1);

PDAnnotationText text = new PDAnnotationText();
text.setContents(commentNameWithComments.get(word));
text.setRectangle(position);
text.setOpen(true);
text.setConstantOpacity(50f);

assert annotations != null;
annotations.add(text);
page1.setAnnotations(annotations);
replaceText(word);

it might be useful for future devs :-)