Search Text and Add Hyperlink on Top of the Text in PDF in Java

This article demonstrates how to search particular text in a PDF document and add link annotations on top of the text occurrences found in Java. The following example uses Free Spire.PDF for Java library.

Dependencies

First of all, you need to add needed dependencies for including Free Spire.PDF for Java into your Java project. There are two ways to do that.

If you use maven, you need to add the following code to your project’s pom.xml file.

<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.free</artifactId> 

        <version>2.6.3</version> 

    </dependency> 

</dependencies> 

For non-maven projects, download the latest Free Spire.PDF for Java pack from this websiteand add Spire.PDF.jar in the lib folder into your project as a dependency.

Example Code

import com.spire.pdf.PdfDocument;
import com.spire.pdf.PdfPageBase;
import com.spire.pdf.annotations.PdfAnnotationBorder;
import com.spire.pdf.annotations.PdfUriAnnotation;
import com.spire.pdf.general.find.PdfTextFind;
import com.spire.pdf.graphics.PdfRGBColor;

public class AddHyperlinkToParticularText {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        //Load the sample PDF document
        PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument();
        pdf.loadFromFile("example.pdf");

        PdfTextFind[] result;
        //Loop through all pages in the PDF document
        for (PdfPageBase page : (Iterable<PdfPageBase>) pdf.getPages()) {
            //Search for the text "website"
            result = page.findText("website").getFinds();

            //Add link annotations to the top of the text occurrences found
            for (PdfTextFind find : result) {
                //Create a PdfUriAnnotation
                PdfUriAnnotation uri = new PdfUriAnnotation(find.getBounds());
                //Set link address
                uri.setUri("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink");
                //Set border of the annotation
                uri.setBorder(new PdfAnnotationBorder(1f));
                uri.setColor(new PdfRGBColor(0,0,255));
                //Add the annotation to page
                page.getAnnotationsWidget().add(uri);
            }
        }

        //Save the result document
        pdf.saveToFile("out.pdf");
    }
}

The following screenshot shows the output PDF document after adding link annotation to particular text: