1

I have requirement to show the pdfs to the users via asp.net application. These pdfs are password protected using iTextSharp. The password is known within the application but not to the users. Lets say password is saved in a table for each file. I want to display the pdf to users without asking for the password from them or letting them to know the pdf. Is there anyway to do this?

UPDATE

My requirement is to protect those pdf files from others who has access to the destination folder (where pdfs are uploaded) by putting password protection.

Novice Programmer
  • 423
  • 3
  • 15

2 Answers2

1

With the PDF format, there are two types of password: user and owner password.

You can use a tool like PDFTK to rebuild your PDF using only an owner password and disallowing any authoring operation.

Benoit
  • 76,634
  • 23
  • 210
  • 236
  • I knew about owner and user password. I wanted to have user password as I dont let anyone to open the pdf other than through the application in order to protect those contents. Anyway thanks Benoit for the kind reply... – Novice Programmer Oct 10 '11 at 12:51
0

If you want to give people access to these PDFs you either need to give the users the password or remove the password. That's the only two options. The last option can be implemented in several ways, however. For instance, you could JPG the PDFs which would obviously remove the password. You could also apply a NULL userPassword which would allow people to open but not edit the PDFs. Both of these things you could do on the fly and serve a dynamic PDF if needed.

If I'm not understanding you correctly explain a little more and we'll try to help you.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Chris Haas
  • 53,986
  • 12
  • 141
  • 274
  • Thanks Chris for your reply. I'm asking is that possible let the application users to view the pdf without letting them going through the process of typing the password (which might be annoying for them). Since within the app, password is known, can't I retrieve the pdf and give the password and send to application front end..? – Novice Programmer Oct 10 '11 at 13:07