Facing org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.InvalidPasswordException while converting PDF to JSON using Tika in AEM

[Karishma_begumSh]

Hi all,

I’m trying to convert a PDF stored in AEM DAM to a JSON tree structure (pages → paragraphs → lines) using Apache Tika’s PDFParser. Below is the servlet code I’m using:

However, when I try to parse certain PDFs, I’m getting the following exception:

org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.encryption.InvalidPasswordException

It seems like the PDF might be password-protected, but I don’t have the password and some PDFs are not encrypted.

package com.core.servlets;

import com.day.cq.dam.api.Asset;
import com.day.cq.dam.api.Rendition;
import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletRequest;
import org.apache.sling.api.SlingHttpServletResponse;
import org.apache.sling.api.servlets.HttpConstants;
import org.apache.sling.api.servlets.SlingAllMethodsServlet;
import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONObject;
import org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Component;
import org.apache.tika.parser.pdf.PDFParser;
import org.apache.tika.parser.ParseContext;
import org.apache.tika.metadata.Metadata;
import org.apache.tika.sax.ToXMLContentHandler;
import org.xml.sax.ContentHandler;

import javax.servlet.Servlet;
import java.io.InputStream;

@Component(
        service = Servlet.class,
        property = {
                "sling.servlet.methods=" + HttpConstants.METHOD_GET,
                "sling.servlet.paths=" + "/bin/pdfToJson"
        }
)
public class PdfToJsonServlet extends SlingAllMethodsServlet {

    
    protected void doGet(SlingHttpServletRequest request, SlingHttpServletResponse response) {
        String damPath = request.getParameter("path"); // DAM path of PDF
        response.setContentType("application/json");

        try {
            if (damPath == null || damPath.isEmpty()) {
                response.setStatus(400);
                response.getWriter().write("{\"error\":\"Please provide a DAM path parameter\"}");
                return;
            }

            Asset asset = request.getResourceResolver().getResource(damPath).adaptTo(Asset.class);
            if (asset == null) {
                response.setStatus(404);
                response.getWriter().write("{\"error\":\"Asset not found\"}");
                return;
            }

            Rendition rendition = asset.getOriginal();
            try (InputStream is = rendition.adaptTo(InputStream.class)) {

                // Use Tika PDFParser with XML output
                ContentHandler handler = new ToXMLContentHandler();
                PDFParser parser = new PDFParser();
                Metadata metadata = new Metadata();
                ParseContext context = new ParseContext();
                parser.parse(is, handler, metadata, context);

                String xmlContent = handler.toString();

                // Convert XML to JSON tree (simple page/paragraph/line approximation)
                JSONObject pdfJson = new JSONObject();
                JSONArray pagesArray = new JSONArray();

                // Split pages by <div class="page">
                String[] pages = xmlContent.split("<div class=\"page\"");
                int pageNumber = 1;
                for (String page : pages) {
                    if (page.trim().isEmpty()) continue;

                    JSONObject pageObj = new JSONObject();
                    pageObj.put("pageNumber", pageNumber++);
                    JSONArray paragraphsArray = new JSONArray();

                    // Split paragraphs by <p>
                    String[] paragraphs = page.split("<p>");
                    for (String para : paragraphs) {
                        para = para.replaceAll("</p>", "").trim();
                        if (para.isEmpty()) continue;

                        JSONObject paraObj = new JSONObject();
                        JSONArray linesArray = new JSONArray();

                        // Split lines by \n
                        String[] lines = para.split("\\n");
                        for (String line : lines) {
                            line = line.trim();
                            if (!line.isEmpty()) linesArray.put(line);
                        }

                        paraObj.put("lines", linesArray);
                        paragraphsArray.put(paraObj);
                    }

                    pageObj.put("paragraphs", paragraphsArray);
                    pagesArray.put(pageObj);
                }

                pdfJson.put("pages", pagesArray);

                response.getWriter().write(pdfJson.toString());

            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            response.setStatus(500);
            try {
                response.getWriter().write("{\"error\":\"" + e.getMessage() + "\"}");
            } catch (Exception ex) {
                ex.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
}

This is the code I have used.

Tried using pdfbox dependency, itext as well..but getting dependency injection error.

Can anyone suggest:

1. How to handle PDFs that might be encrypted?

2. How to skip or safely parse PDFs that require a password without failing the whole servlet?

Any code examples or best practices for handling this in AEM with Tika would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!
Regards,
Karishma.

[kautuk_sahni]

@arunpatidar @TarunKumar @narendragandhi @gkalyan @Harwinder-singh @sherinregi @rahulpandey27 @olsalas711 @Himanshu_Jain @olsalas711 could you kindly take a look at this question when you have a moment? Your insights are much appreciated!

[arunpatidar · Accepted solution]

Hi @Karishma_begumSh 

Apache PDFBox (used by Tika) can check if a PDF is encrypted.

public boolean isEncrypted(File pdfFile) {
    try (PDDocument doc = PDDocument.load(pdfFile)) {
        return doc.isEncrypted();
    } catch (Exception e) {
        return true; // treat as encrypted or unreadable
    }
}

If you know the password, you can pass it to PDFBox before Tika parsing, but Tika doesn’t handle passwords directly. Example with PDFBox:

PDDocument doc = PDDocument.load(pdfFile, "password123");

[Syed_Shaik]

hi @arunpatidar

In this load method, an error is showing. I'm using PDF BOX Version 3.0.5

[arunpatidar]

Hi @Syed_Shaik 
What is the error?