Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files are made of a number of objects. Objects may describe a page, a resource, a sequence of drawing operations, an image, or many other components as required by the document.

Every object has a unique Object ID and a characteristic Object Type. The root of the document hierarchy can be accessed using the Root property.

IDs are numbered from one upwards. The ID zero refers to the Empty Object which is an object required internally within ABCpdf. ID -1 refers to the document trailer.

You can use core information types to iterate through every object in your document. To get information about an object, you need to use the GetInfo method. To change properties of an object, you need to use the SetInfo method. All objects support the core properties listed below.

Additionally, Specific Objects support other types of properties in addition to the core properties listed below.

Core Object Information Types

Type Name GetInfo SetInfo Description
ID  

The Object ID of the Object.

For any existing object, the code theDoc.GetInfo(theID, "ID") will always be equal to theID. Object IDs are unique.

Type  

The Type of the Object.

This is a four character code that specifies the type of an object. Different object types have different properties.

Active  

This property is included for historical reasons.

The value of this property is always 1.

Value

The content of the object as it will be inserted into the final PDF document.

Note that the content of an object may be large and it may contain unusual characters.

See the Object Paths section of this document for further details.

/Label

Any object in a PDF dictionary may be referenced by name.

Most PDF objects are dictionaries. Dictionaries contain a number of entries, each tagged with a unique name starting with a slash character. You can access any named entry by simply passing the unique name to the GetInfo or SetInfo method. Named entries are case-sensitive.

See the Object Paths section of this document for further details.

Count  

The maximum Object ID in the document.

This property should only be used with Object ID 0.

License

The current license.

This property should only be used with Object ID 0.

Getting the license returns a description of the current license. Setting the license allows you to install an existing license key.

When setting the license you can use a license key as provided when you purchase. Or you can use a trial license key taken from the PDFSettings application. The trial license key can be useful for deploying on shared servers.

ABCpdfVersion  

The current ABCpdf Version String

This property should only be used with Object ID 0.