Validate PDF/A-1 Standard

This guide shows the process of validating PDF/A standard using UniPDF library.

Before you begin #

First you should get your API key from your UniCloud account.

If this is your first time using UniPDF SDK, follow this guide to set up a local development environment.

Project setup #

Clone the project repository #

In your terminal, clone examples repository. It contains the Go code we will be using for this guide.

git clone https://github.com/unidoc/unipdf-examples.git

Navigate to the pdfa folder in the unipdf-examples directory.

cd unipdf-examples/pdfa

Configure environment variables #

Replace the UNIDOC_LICENSE_API_KEY with your API credentials from your UniCloud account.

Linux/Mac #

export UNIDOC_LICENSE_API_KEY=PUT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE

Windows #

set UNIDOC_LICENSE_API_KEY=PUT_YOUR_API_KEY_HERE

How it works #

The necessary UniPDF packages and other go libraries are imported using import section in lines 9-18. The init function defined in lines 20-27 loads your metered license key and authenticates your request.

The main function defined in lines 29-69 validates the PDF/A standard. In lines 30-35 the path to the input file is read from the command line arguments. The starting time is instantiated in line 38. A new compliance reader is instantiated using NewCompliancePdfReader(inputFile) in line 47. A list of standards containing pdfa.Profile1A and pdfa.Profile1B is instantiated in lines 54-57. In lines 60-64 the for loop iterates through each profile and validates the PDF/A standard using standard.ValidateStandard(detailedReader).

Finally the time taken is measured using float64(time.Since(start)) / float64(time.Millisecond) in line 67.

Run the code #

Run this command to validate the PDF/A standard on the <input.pdf> file.

go run pdfa_validate_standard.go <input.pdf>

Sample output #

The following message is a sample output printed on the terminal after running the code with sample input file.

Processing time: 42.82 ms

PDF/A-1 verapdf validation report #

The following image shows a validation report from verapdf for the same file.