How to paste text to a PDF file in iOS programmatically - ios

Question

Today i searched a while for a way to programmatically pasting text in a PDF file in an iOS 7 app. Unfortunately there is no easy way to edit a PDF form. You can use a paid library but that was not an option for me. So i did it by pasting text at specified coordinates by using CGPDF.
This is the way i did it:
- (void)editPDF
{
NSString* fileName = #"new.pdf";
NSArray *arrayPaths =
NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(
NSDocumentDirectory,
NSUserDomainMask,
YES);
NSString *path = [arrayPaths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString* pdfFileName = [path stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName];
NSString *templatePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"mytemplate" ofType:#"pdf"];
//create empty pdf file;
UIGraphicsBeginPDFContextToFile(pdfFileName, CGRectMake(0, 0, 792, 612), nil);
CFURLRef url = CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath (NULL, (CFStringRef)templatePath, kCFURLPOSIXPathStyle, 0);
//open template file
CGPDFDocumentRef templateDocument = CGPDFDocumentCreateWithURL(url);
CFRelease(url);
//get amount of pages in template
size_t count = CGPDFDocumentGetNumberOfPages(templateDocument);
//for each page in template
for (size_t pageNumber = 1; pageNumber <= count; pageNumber++) {
//get bounds of template page
CGPDFPageRef templatePage = CGPDFDocumentGetPage(templateDocument, pageNumber);
CGRect templatePageBounds = CGPDFPageGetBoxRect(templatePage, kCGPDFCropBox);
//create empty page with corresponding bounds in new document
UIGraphicsBeginPDFPageWithInfo(templatePageBounds, nil);
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
//flip context due to different origins
CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0.0, templatePageBounds.size.height);
CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0);
//copy content of template page on the corresponding page in new file
CGContextDrawPDFPage(context, templatePage);
//flip context back
CGContextTranslateCTM(context, 0.0, templatePageBounds.size.height);
CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0);
//create dictionary for font
UIFont *font = [UIFont fontWithName: #"Courier" size:12];
NSDictionary *attribdict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys: font, NSFontAttributeName, nil];
/* Here you can do any drawings */
[#"Test" drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(200, 300) withAttributes:attribdict];
}
CGPDFDocumentRelease(templateDocument);
UIGraphicsEndPDFContext();
[self showPDFFile];
}
-(void)showPDFFile
{
NSString* fileName = #"new.pdf";
NSArray *arrayPaths =
NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(
NSDocumentDirectory,
NSUserDomainMask,
YES);
NSString *path = [arrayPaths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString* pdfFileName = [path stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName];
UIWebView* webView = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 1024, 768)];
NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:pdfFileName];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[webView setScalesPageToFit:YES];
[webView loadRequest:request];
[self.view addSubview:webView];
}
You only have to find out the CGPoint(s) of the point where you want to paste the text and paste a line for each text.
Very helpful was this link: how to edit a PDF in objective-c?
If anybody has a better solution for this i would appreciate if he/she can answer and post it.