# Design and Library Notes

## Introduction

This section was written prior to the implementation of the qpdf library and was subsequently modified to reflect the implementation. In some cases, for purposes of explanation, it may differ slightly from the actual implementation. As always, the source code and test suite are authoritative. Even if there are some errors, this document should serve as a road map to understanding how this code works.

In general, one should adhere strictly to a specification when writing but be liberal in reading. This way, the product of our software will be accepted by the widest range of other programs, and we will accept the widest range of input files. This library attempts to conform to that philosophy whenever possible but also aims to provide strict checking for people who want to validate PDF files. If you don’t want to see warnings and are trying to write something that is tolerant, you can call `setSuppressWarnings(true)`. If you want to fail on the first error, you can call `setAttemptRecovery(false)`. The default behavior is to generating warnings for recoverable problems. Note that recovery will not always produce the desired results even if it is able to get through the file. Unlike most other PDF files that produce generic warnings such as “This file is damaged,” qpdf generally issues a detailed error message that would be most useful to a PDF developer. This is by design as there seems to be a shortage of PDF validation tools out there. This was, in fact, one of the major motivations behind the initial creation of qpdf. That said, qpdf is not a strict PDF checker. There are many ways in which a PDF file can be out of conformance to the spec that qpdf doesn’t notice or report.

## Design Goals

The qpdf library includes support for reading and rewriting PDF files. It aims to hide from the user details involving object locations, modified (appended) PDF files, use of object streams, and stream filters including encryption. It does not aim to hide knowledge of the object hierarchy or content stream contents. Put another way, a user of the qpdf library is expected to have knowledge about how PDF files work, but is not expected to have to keep track of bookkeeping details such as file positions.

When accessing objects, a user of the library never has to care whether an object is direct or indirect as all access to objects deals with this transparently. All memory management details are also handled by the library. When modifying objects, it is possible to determine whether an object is indirect and to make copies of the object if needed.

Memory is managed mostly with `std::shared_ptr` object to minimize explicit memory handling. This library also makes use of a technique for giving fine-grained access to methods in one class to other classes by using public subclasses with friends and only private members that in turn call private methods of the containing class. See `QPDFObjectHandle::Factory` as an example.

The top-level qpdf class is `QPDF`. A `QPDF` object represents a PDF file. The library provides methods for both accessing and mutating PDF files.

The primary class for interacting with PDF objects is `QPDFObjectHandle`. Instances of this class can be passed around by value, copied, stored in containers, etc. with very low overhead. The `QPDFObjectHandle` object contains an internal shared pointer to the underlying object. Instances of `QPDFObjectHandle` created by reading from a file will always contain a reference back to the `QPDF` object from which they were created. A `QPDFObjectHandle` may be direct or indirect. If indirect, object is initially unresolved. In this case, the first attempt to access the underlying object will result in the object being resolved via a call to the referenced `QPDF` instance. This makes it essentially impossible to make coding errors in which certain things will work for some PDF files and not for others based on which objects are direct and which objects are indirect. In cases where it is necessary to know whether an object is indirect or not, this information can be obtained from the `QPDFObjectHandle`. It is also possible to convert direct objects to indirect objects and vice versa.

Instances of `QPDFObjectHandle` can be directly created and modified using static factory methods in the `QPDFObjectHandle` class. There are factory methods for each type of object as well as a convenience method `QPDFObjectHandle::parse` that creates an object from a string representation of the object. The `_qpdf` user-defined string literal is also available, making it possible to create instances of `QPDFObjectHandle` with `"(pdf-syntax)"_qpdf`. Existing instances of `QPDFObjectHandle` can also be modified in several ways. See comments in `QPDFObjectHandle.hh` for details.

An instance of `QPDF` is constructed by using the class’s default constructor or with `QPDF::create()`. If desired, the `QPDF` object may be configured with various methods that change its default behavior. Then the `QPDF::processFile` method is passed the name of a PDF file, which permanently associates the file with that `QPDF` object. A password may also be given for access to password-protected files. `QPDF` does not enforce encryption parameters and will treat user and owner passwords equivalently. Either password may be used to access an encrypted file. `QPDF` will allow recovery of a user password given an owner password. The input PDF file must be seekable. Output files written by `QPDFWriter` need not be seekable, even when creating linearized files. During construction, `QPDF` validates the PDF file’s header, and then reads the cross reference tables and trailer dictionaries. The `QPDF` class keeps only the first trailer dictionary though it does read all of them so it can check the `/Prev` key. `QPDF` class users may request the root object and the trailer dictionary specifically. The cross reference table is kept private. Objects may then be requested by number or by walking the object tree.

When a PDF file has a cross-reference stream instead of a cross-reference table and trailer, requesting the document’s trailer dictionary returns the stream dictionary from the cross-reference stream instead.

There are some convenience routines for very common operations such as walking the page tree and returning a vector of all page objects. For full details, please see the header files `QPDF.hh` and `QPDFObjectHandle.hh`. There are also some additional helper classes that provide higher level API functions for certain document constructions. These are discussed in Helper Classes.

## Helper Classes

QPDF version 8.1 introduced the concept of helper classes. Helper classes are intended to contain higher level APIs that allow developers to work with certain document constructs at an abstraction level above that of `QPDFObjectHandle` while staying true to qpdf’s philosophy of not hiding document structure from the developer. As with qpdf in general, the goal is to take away some of the more tedious bookkeeping aspects of working with PDF files, not to remove the need for the developer to understand how the PDF construction in question works. The driving factor behind the creation of helper classes was to allow the evolution of higher level interfaces in qpdf without polluting the interfaces of the main top-level classes `QPDF` and `QPDFObjectHandle`.

There are two kinds of helper classes: document helpers and object helpers. Document helpers are constructed with a reference to a `QPDF` object and provide methods for working with structures that are at the document level. Object helpers are constructed with an instance of a `QPDFObjectHandle` and provide methods for working with specific types of objects.

Examples of document helpers include `QPDFPageDocumentHelper`, which contains methods for operating on the document’s page trees, such as enumerating all pages of a document and adding and removing pages; and `QPDFAcroFormDocumentHelper`, which contains document-level methods related to interactive forms, such as enumerating form fields and creating mappings between form fields and annotations.

Examples of object helpers include `QPDFPageObjectHelper` for performing operations on pages such as page rotation and some operations on content streams, `QPDFFormFieldObjectHelper` for performing operations related to interactive form fields, and `QPDFAnnotationObjectHelper` for working with annotations.

It is always possible to retrieve the underlying `QPDF` reference from a document helper and the underlying `QPDFObjectHandle` reference from an object helper. Helpers are designed to be helpers, not wrappers. The intention is that, in general, it is safe to freely intermix operations that use helpers with operations that use the underlying objects. Document and object helpers do not attempt to provide a complete interface for working with the things they are helping with, nor do they attempt to encapsulate underlying structures. They just provide a few methods to help with error-prone, repetitive, or complex tasks. In some cases, a helper object may cache some information that is expensive to gather. In such cases, the helper classes are implemented so that their own methods keep the cache consistent, and the header file will provide a method to invalidate the cache and a description of what kinds of operations would make the cache invalid. If in doubt, you can always discard a helper class and create a new one with the same underlying objects, which will ensure that you have discarded any stale information.

By Convention, document helpers are called `QPDFSomethingDocumentHelper` and are derived from `QPDFDocumentHelper`, and object helpers are called `QPDFSomethingObjectHelper` and are derived from `QPDFObjectHelper`. For details on specific helpers, please see their header files. You can find them by looking at `include/qpdf/QPDF*DocumentHelper.hh` and `include/qpdf/QPDF*ObjectHelper.hh`.

In order to avoid creation of circular dependencies, the following general guidelines are followed with helper classes:

- Core class interfaces do not know about helper classes. For example, no methods of `QPDF` or `QPDFObjectHandle` will include helper classes in their interfaces.

- Interfaces of object helpers will usually not use document helpers in their interfaces. This is because it is much more useful for document helpers to have methods that return object helpers. Most operations in PDF files start at the document level and go from there to the object level rather than the other way around. It can sometimes be useful to map back from object-level structures to document-level structures. If there is a desire to do this, it will generally be provided by a method in the document helper class.

- Most of the time, object helpers don’t know about other object helpers. However, in some cases, one type of object may be a container for another type of object, in which case it may make sense for the outer object to know about the inner object. For example, there are methods in the `QPDFPageObjectHelper` that know `QPDFAnnotationObjectHelper` because references to annotations are contained in page dictionaries.

- Any helper or core library class may use helpers in their implementations.

Prior to qpdf version 8.1, higher level interfaces were added as “convenience functions” in either `QPDF` or `QPDFObjectHandle`. For compatibility, older convenience functions for operating with pages will remain in those classes even as alternatives are provided in helper classes. Going forward, new higher level interfaces will be provided using helper classes.

## Implementation Notes

This section contains a few notes about QPDF’s internal implementation, particularly around what it does when it first processes a file. This section is a bit of a simplification of what it actually does, but it could serve as a starting point to someone trying to understand the implementation. There is nothing in this section that you need to know to use the qpdf library.

In a PDF file, objects may be direct or indirect. Direct objects are objects whose representations appear directly in PDF syntax. Indirect objects are references to objects by their ID. The qpdf library uses the `QPDFObjectHandle` type to hold onto objects and to abstract away in most cases whether the object is direct or indirect.

Internally, `QPDFObjectHandle` holds onto a shared pointer to the underlying object value. When a direct object is created programmatically by client code (rather than being read from the file), the `QPDFObjectHandle` that holds it is not associated with a `QPDF` object. When an indirect object reference is created, it starts off in an unresolved state and must be associated with a `QPDF` object, which is considered its owner. To access the actual value of the object, the object must be resolved. This happens automatically when the the object is accessed in any way.

To resolve an object, qpdf checks its object cache. If not found in the cache, it attempts to read the object from the input source associated with the `QPDF` object. If it is not found, a `null` object is returned. A `null` object is an object type, just like boolean, string, number, etc. It is not a null pointer. The PDF specification states that an indirect reference to an object that doesn’t exist is to be treated as a `null`. The resulting object, whether a `null` or the actual object that was read, is stored in the cache. If the object is later replaced or swapped, the underlying object remains the same, but its value is replaced. This way, if you have a `QPDFObjectHandle` to an indirect object and the object by that number is replaced (by calling `QPDF::replaceObject` or `QPDF::swapObjects`), your `QPDFObjectHandle` will reflect the new value of the object. This is consistent with what would happen to PDF objects if you were to replace the definition of an object in the file.

When reading an object from the input source, if the requested object is inside of an object stream, the object stream itself is first read into memory. Then the tokenizer reads objects from the memory stream based on the offset information stored in the stream. Those individual objects are cached, after which the temporary buffer holding the object stream contents is discarded. In this way, the first time an object in an object stream is requested, all objects in the stream are cached.

The following example should clarify how `QPDF` processes a simple file.

- Client constructs `QPDF` `pdf` and calls `pdf.processFile("a.pdf");`.

- The `QPDF` class checks the beginning of `a.pdf` for a PDF header. It then reads the cross reference table mentioned at the end of the file, ensuring that it is looking before the last `%%EOF`. After getting to `trailer` keyword, it invokes the parser.

- The parser sees `<<`, so it changes state and starts accumulating the keys and values of the dictionary.

- In dictionary creation mode, the parser keeps accumulating objects until it encounters `>>`. Each object that is read is pushed onto a stack. If `R` is read, the last two objects on the stack are inspected. If they are integers, they are popped off the stack and their values are used to obtain an indirect object handle from the `QPDF` class. The `QPDF` class consults its cache, and if necessary, inserts a new unresolved object, and returns an object handle pointing to the cache entry, which is then pushed onto the stack. When `>>` is finally read, the stack is converted into a `QPDF_Dictionary` (not directly accessible through the API) which is placed in a `QPDFObjectHandle` and returned.

- The resulting dictionary is saved as the trailer dictionary.

- The `/Prev` key is searched. If present, `QPDF` seeks to that point and repeats except that the new trailer dictionary is not saved. If `/Prev` is not present, the initial parsing process is complete.

- If there is an encryption dictionary, the document’s encryption parameters are initialized.

- The client requests the root object by getting the value of the `/Root` key from trailer dictionary and returns it. It is an unresolved indirect `QPDFObjectHandle`.

- The client requests the `/Pages` key from root `QPDFObjectHandle`. The `QPDFObjectHandle` notices that it is an unresolved indirect object, so it asks `QPDF` to resolve it. `QPDF` checks the cross reference table, gets the offset, and reads the object present at that offset. The object cache entry’s `unresolved` value is replaced by the actual value, which causes any previously unresolved `QPDFObjectHandle` objects that pointed there to now have a shared copy of the actual object. Modifications through any such `QPDFObjectHandle` will be reflected in all of them. As the client continues to request objects, the same process is followed for each new requested object.

## QPDF Object Internals

The internals of `QPDFObjectHandle` and how qpdf stores objects were significantly rewritten for QPDF 11. Here are some additional details.

### Object Internals

The `QPDF` object has an object cache which contains a shared pointer to each object that was read from the file or added as an indirect object. Changes can be made to any of those objects through `QPDFObjectHandle` methods. Any such changes are visible to all `QPDFObjectHandle` instances that point to the same object. When a `QPDF` object is written by `QPDFWriter` or serialized to JSON, any changes are reflected.

### Objects in qpdf 11 and Newer

The object cache in `QPDF` contains a shared pointer to `QPDFObject`. Any `QPDFObjectHandle` resolved from an indirect reference to that object has a copy of that shared pointer. Each `QPDFObject` object contains a shared pointer to an object of type `QPDFValue`. The `QPDFValue` type is an abstract base class. There is an implementation for each of the basic object types (array, dictionary, null, boolean, string, number, etc.) as well as a few special ones including `uninitialized`, `unresolved`, `reserved`, and `destroyed`. When an object is first created, its underlying `QPDFValue` has type `unresolved`. When the object is first accessed, the `QPDFObject` in the cache has its internal `QPDFValue` replaced with the object as read from the file. Since it is the `QPDFObject` object that is shared by all referencing `QPDFObjectHandle` objects as well as by the owning `QPDF` object, this ensures that any future changes to the object, including replacing the object with a completely different one by calling `QPDF::replaceObject` or `QPDF::swapObjects`, will be reflected across all `QPDFObjectHandle` objects that reference it.

A `QPDFValue` that originated from a PDF input source maintains a pointer to the `QPDF` object that read it (its owner). When that `QPDF` object is destroyed, it disconnects all objects reachable from it by clearing their owner. For indirect objects (all objects in the object cache), it also replaces the object’s value with an object of type `destroyed`. This means that, if there are still any referencing `QPDFObjectHandle` objects floating around, requesting their owning `QPDF` will return a null pointer rather than a pointer to a `QPDF` object that is either invalid or points to something else, and any attempt to access an indirect object that is associated with a destroyed `QPDF` object will throw an exception. This operation also has the effect of breaking any circular references (which are common and, in some cases, required by the PDF specification), thus preventing memory leaks when `QPDF` objects are destroyed.

### Objects prior to qpdf 11

Prior to qpdf 11, the functionality of the `QPDFValue` and `QPDFObject` classes were contained in a single `QPDFObject` class, which served the dual purpose of being the cache entry for `QPDF` and being the abstract base class for all the different PDF object types. The behavior was nearly the same, but there were some problems:

- While changes to a `QPDFObjectHandle` through mutation were visible across all referencing `QPDFObjectHandle` objects, replacing an object with `QPDF::replaceObject` or `QPDF::swapObjects` would leave `QPDF` with no way of notifying `QPDFObjectHandle` objects that pointed to the old `QPDFObject`. To work around this, every attempt to access the underlying object that a `QPDFObjectHandle` pointed to had to ask the owning `QPDF` whether the object had changed, and if so, it had to replace its internal `QPDFObject` pointer. This added overhead to every indirect object access even if no objects were ever changed.

- When a `QPDF` object was destroyed, any `QPDFObjectHandle` objects that referenced it would maintain a potentially invalid pointer as the owning `QPDF`. In practice, this wasn’t usually a problem since generally people would have no need to maintain copies of a `QPDFObjectHandle` from a destroyed `QPDF` object, but in cases where this was possible, it was necessary for other software to do its own bookkeeping to ensure that an object’s owner was still valid.

These problems were solved by splitting `QPDFObject` into `QPDFObject` and `QPDFValue`.

## Casting Policy

This section describes the casting policy followed by qpdf’s implementation. This is no concern to qpdf’s end users and largely of no concern to people writing code that uses qpdf, but it could be of interest to people who are porting qpdf to a new platform or who are making modifications to the code.

The C++ code in qpdf is free of old-style casts except where unavoidable (e.g. where the old-style cast is in a macro provided by a third-party header file). When there is a need for a cast, it is handled, in order of preference, by rewriting the code to avoid the need for a cast, calling `const_cast`, calling `static_cast`, calling `reinterpret_cast`, or calling some combination of the above. As a last resort, a compiler-specific `#pragma` may be used to suppress a warning that we don’t want to fix. Examples may include suppressing warnings about the use of old-style casts in code that is shared between C and C++ code.

The `QIntC` namespace, provided by `include/qpdf/QIntC.hh`, implements safe functions for converting between integer types. These functions do range checking and throw a `std::range_error`, which is subclass of `std::runtime_error`, if conversion from one integer type to another results in loss of information. There are many cases in which we have to move between different integer types because of incompatible integer types used in interoperable interfaces. Some are unavoidable, such as moving between sizes and offsets, and others are there because of old code that is too in entrenched to be fixable without breaking source compatibility and causing pain for users. QPDF is compiled with extra warnings to detect conversions with potential data loss, and all such cases should be fixed by either using a function from `QIntC` or a `static_cast`.

When the intention is just to switch the type because of exchanging data between incompatible interfaces, use `QIntC`. This is the usual case. However, there are some cases in which we are explicitly intending to use the exact same bit pattern with a different type. This is most common when switching between signed and unsigned characters. A lot of qpdf’s code uses unsigned characters internally, but `std::string` and `char` are signed. Using `QIntC::to_char` would be wrong for converting from unsigned to signed characters because a negative `char` value and the corresponding `unsigned char` value greater than 127 mean the same thing. There are also cases in which we use `static_cast` when working with bit fields where we are not representing a numerical value but rather a bunch of bits packed together in some integer type. Also note that `size_t` and `long` both typically differ between 32-bit and 64-bit environments, so sometimes an explicit cast may not be needed to avoid warnings on one platform but may be needed on another. A conversion with `QIntC` should always be used when the types are different even if the underlying size is the same. QPDF’s automatic build builds on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, and the test suite is very thorough, so it is hard to make any of the potential errors here without being caught in build or test.

## Encryption

Encryption is supported transparently by qpdf. When opening a PDF file, if an encryption dictionary exists, the `QPDF` object processes this dictionary using the password (if any) provided. The primary decryption key is computed and cached. No further access is made to the encryption dictionary after that time. When an object is read from a file, the object ID and generation of the object in which it is contained is always known. Using this information along with the stored encryption key, all stream and string objects are transparently decrypted. Raw encrypted objects are never stored in memory. This way, nothing in the library ever has to know or care whether it is reading an encrypted file.

An interface is also provided for writing encrypted streams and strings given an encryption key. This is used by `QPDFWriter` when it rewrites encrypted files.

When copying encrypted files, unless otherwise directed, qpdf will preserve any encryption in effect in the original file. qpdf can do this with either the user or the owner password. There is no difference in capability based on which password is used. When 40 or 128 bit encryption keys are used, the user password can be recovered with the owner password. With 256 keys, the user and owner passwords are used independently to encrypt the actual encryption key, so while either can be used, the owner password can no longer be used to recover the user password.

Starting with version 4.0.0, qpdf can read files that are not encrypted but that contain encrypted attachments, but it cannot write such files. qpdf also requires the password to be specified in order to open the file, not just to extract attachments, since once the file is open, all decryption is handled transparently. When copying files like this while preserving encryption, qpdf will apply the file’s encryption to everything in the file, not just to the attachments. When decrypting the file, qpdf will decrypt the attachments. In general, when copying PDF files with multiple encryption formats, qpdf will choose the newest format. The only exception to this is that clear-text metadata will be preserved as clear-text if it is that way in the original file.

One point of confusion some people have about encrypted PDF files is that encryption is not the same as password protection. Password-protected files are always encrypted, but it is also possible to create encrypted files that do not have passwords. Internally, such files use the empty string as a password, and most readers try the empty string first to see if it works and prompt for a password only if the empty string doesn’t work. Normally such files have an empty user password and a non-empty owner password. In that way, if the file is opened by an ordinary reader without specification of password, the restrictions specified in the encryption dictionary can be enforced. Most users wouldn’t even realize such a file was encrypted. Since qpdf always ignores the restrictions (except for the purpose of reporting what they are), qpdf doesn’t care which password you use. QPDF will allow you to create PDF files with non-empty user passwords and empty owner passwords. Some readers will require a password when you open these files, and others will open the files without a password and not enforce restrictions. Having a non-empty user password and an empty owner password doesn’t really make sense because it would mean that opening the file with the user password would be more restrictive than not supplying a password at all. QPDF also allows you to create PDF files with the same password as both the user and owner password. Some readers will not ever allow such files to be accessed without restrictions because they never try the password as the owner password if it works as the user password. Nonetheless, one of the powerful aspects of qpdf is that it allows you to finely specify the way encrypted files are created, even if the results are not useful to some readers. One use case for this would be for testing a PDF reader to ensure that it handles odd configurations of input files. If you attempt to create an encrypted file that is not secure, qpdf will warn you and require you to explicitly state your intention to create an insecure file. So while qpdf can create insecure files, it won’t let you do it by mistake.

## Random Number Generation

QPDF generates random numbers to support generation of encrypted data. Starting in qpdf 10.0.0, qpdf uses the crypto provider as its source of random numbers. Older versions used the OS-provided source of secure random numbers or, if allowed at build time, insecure random numbers from stdlib. Starting with version 5.1.0, you can disable use of OS-provided secure random numbers at build time. This is especially useful on Windows if you want to avoid a dependency on Microsoft’s cryptography API. You can also supply your own random data provider. For details on how to do this, please refer to the top-level README.md file in the source distribution and to comments in `QUtil.hh`.

## Adding and Removing Pages

While qpdf’s API has supported adding and modifying objects for some time, version 3.0 introduces specific methods for adding and removing pages. These are largely convenience routines that handle two tricky issues: pushing inheritable resources from the `/Pages` tree down to individual pages and manipulation of the `/Pages` tree itself. For details, see `addPage` and surrounding methods in `QPDF.hh`.

## Reserving Object Numbers

Version 3.0 of qpdf introduced the concept of reserved objects. These are seldom needed for ordinary operations, but there are cases in which you may want to add a series of indirect objects with references to each other to a `QPDF` object. This causes a problem because you can’t determine the object ID that a new indirect object will have until you add it to the `QPDF` object with `QPDF::makeIndirectObject`. The only way to add two mutually referential objects to a `QPDF` object prior to version 3.0 would be to add the new objects first and then make them refer to each other after adding them. Now it is possible to create a reserved object using `QPDFObjectHandle::newReserved`. This is an indirect object that stays “unresolved” even if it is queried for its type. So now, if you want to create a set of mutually referential objects, you can create reservations for each one of them and use those reservations to construct the references. When finished, you can call `QPDF::replaceReserved` to replace the reserved objects with the real ones. This functionality will never be needed by most applications, but it is used internally by QPDF when copying objects from other PDF files, as discussed in Copying Objects From Other PDF Files. For an example of how to use reserved objects, search for `newReserved` in `test_driver.cc` in qpdf’s sources.

## Copying Objects From Other PDF Files

Version 3.0 of qpdf introduced the ability to copy objects into a `QPDF` object from a different `QPDF` object, which we refer to as foreign objects. This allows arbitrary merging of PDF files. The qpdf command-line tool provides limited support for basic page selection, including merging in pages from other files, but the library’s API makes it possible to implement arbitrarily complex merging operations. The main method for copying foreign objects is `QPDF::copyForeignObject`. This takes an indirect object from another `QPDF` and copies it recursively into this object while preserving all object structure, including circular references. This means you can add a direct object that you create from scratch to a `QPDF` object with `QPDF::makeIndirectObject`, and you can add an indirect object from another file with `QPDF::copyForeignObject`. The fact that `QPDF::makeIndirectObject` does not automatically detect a foreign object and copy it is an explicit design decision. Copying a foreign object seems like a sufficiently significant thing to do that it should be done explicitly.

The other way to copy foreign objects is by passing a page from one `QPDF` to another by calling `QPDF::addPage`. In contrast to `QPDF::makeIndirectObject`, this method automatically distinguishes between indirect objects in the current file, foreign objects, and direct objects.

When you copy objects from one `QPDF` to another, the input source of the original file must remain valid until you have finished with the destination object. This is because the input source is still used to retrieve any referenced stream data from the copied object. If needed, there are methods to force the data to be copied. See comments near the declaration of `copyForeignObject` in `include/qpdf/QPDF.hh` for details.

## Writing PDF Files

The qpdf library supports file writing of `QPDF` objects to PDF files through the `QPDFWriter` class. The `QPDFWriter` class has two writing modes: one for non-linearized files, and one for linearized files. See Linearization for a description of linearization is implemented. This section describes how we write non-linearized files including the creation of QDF files (see QDF Mode).

This outline was written prior to implementation and is not exactly accurate, but it portrays the essence of how writing works. Look at the code in `QPDFWriter` for exact details.

- Initialize state:

  - next object number = 1

  - object queue = empty

  - renumber table: old object id/generation to new id/0 = empty

  - xref table: new id -> offset = empty

- Create a `QPDF` object from a file.

- Write header for new PDF file.

- Request the trailer dictionary.

- For each value that is an indirect object, grab the next object number (via an operation that returns and increments the number). Map object to new number in renumber table. Push object onto queue.

- While there are more objects on the queue:

  - Pop queue.

  - Look up object’s new number n in the renumbering table.

  - Store current offset into xref table.

  - Write `:samp:`{n}` 0 obj`.

  - If object is null, whether direct or indirect, write out null, thus eliminating unresolvable indirect object references.

  - If the object is a stream stream, write stream contents, piped through any filters as required, to a memory buffer. Use this buffer to determine the stream length.

  - If object is not a stream, array, or dictionary, write out its contents.

  - If object is an array or dictionary (including stream), traverse its elements (for array) or values (for dictionaries), handling recursive dictionaries and arrays, looking for indirect objects. When an indirect object is found, if it is not resolvable, ignore. (This case is handled when writing it out.) Otherwise, look it up in the renumbering table. If not found, grab the next available object number, assign to the referenced object in the renumbering table, and push the referenced object onto the queue. As a special case, when writing out a stream dictionary, replace length, filters, and decode parameters as required.

    Write out dictionary or array, replacing any unresolvable indirect object references with null (pdf spec says reference to non-existent object is legal and resolves to null) and any resolvable ones with references to the renumbered objects.

  - If the object is a stream, write `stream\n`, the stream contents (from the memory buffer), and `\nendstream\n`.

  - When done, write `endobj`.

Once we have finished the queue, all referenced objects will have been written out and all deleted objects or unreferenced objects will have been skipped. The new cross-reference table will contain an offset for every new object number from 1 up to the number of objects written. This can be used to write out a new xref table. Finally we can write out the trailer dictionary with appropriately computed /ID (see spec, 8.3, File Identifiers), the cross reference table offset, and `%%EOF`.

## Filtered Streams

Support for streams is implemented through the `Pipeline` interface which was designed for this library.

When reading streams, create a series of `Pipeline` objects. The `Pipeline` abstract base requires implementation `write()` and `finish()` and provides an implementation of `getNext()`. Each pipeline object, upon receiving data, does whatever it is going to do and then writes the data (possibly modified) to its successor. Alternatively, a pipeline may be an end-of-the-line pipeline that does something like store its output to a file or a memory buffer ignoring a successor. For additional details, look at `Pipeline.hh`.

`QPDF` can read raw or filtered streams. When reading a filtered stream, the `QPDF` class creates a `Pipeline` object for one of each appropriate filter object and chains them together. The last filter should write to whatever type of output is required. The `QPDF` class has an interface to write raw or filtered stream contents to a given pipeline.

## Object Accessor Methods

For general information about how to access instances of `QPDFObjectHandle`, please see the comments in `QPDFObjectHandle.hh`. Search for “Accessor methods”. This section provides a more in-depth discussion of the behavior and the rationale for the behavior.

Why were type errors made into warnings? When type checks were introduced into qpdf in the early days, it was expected that type errors would only occur as a result of programmer error. However, in practice, type errors would occur with malformed PDF files because of assumptions made in code, including code within the qpdf library and code written by library users. The most common case would be chaining calls to `getKey()` to access keys deep within a dictionary. In many cases, qpdf would be able to recover from these situations, but the old behavior often resulted in crashes rather than graceful recovery. For this reason, the errors were changed to warnings.

Why even warn about type errors when the user can’t usually do anything about them? Type warnings are extremely valuable during development. Since it’s impossible to catch at compile time things like typos in dictionary key names or logic errors around what the structure of a PDF file might be, the presence of type warnings can save lots of developer time. They have also proven useful in exposing issues in qpdf itself that would have otherwise gone undetected.

Can there be a type-safe `QPDFObjectHandle`? At the time of the release of qpdf 11, there is active work being done toward the goal of creating a way to work with PDF objects that is more type-safe and closer in feel to the current C++ standard library. It is hoped that this work will make it easier to write bindings to qpdf in modern languages like Rust. If this happens, it will likely be by providing an alternative to `QPDFObjectHandle` that provides a separate path to the underlying object. Details are still being worked out. Fundamentally, PDF objects are not strongly typed. They are similar to `JSON` objects or to objects in dynamic languages like Python: there are certain things you can only do to objects of a given type, but you can replace an object of one type with an object of another. Because of this, there will always be some checks that will happen at runtime.

Why does the behavior of a type exception differ between the C and C++ API? There is no way to throw and catch exceptions in C short of something like `setjmp` and `longjmp`, and that approach is not portable across language barriers. Since the C API is often used from other languages, it’s important to keep things as simple as possible. Starting in qpdf 10.5, exceptions that used to crash code using the C API will be written to stderr by default, and it is possible to register an error handler. There’s no reason that the error handler can’t simulate exception handling in some way, such as by using `setjmp` and `longjmp` or by setting some variable that can be checked after library calls are made. In retrospect, it might have been better if the C API object handle methods returned error codes like the other methods and set return values in passed-in pointers, but this would complicate both the implementation and the use of the library for a case that is actually quite rare and largely avoidable.

How can I avoid type warnings altogether? For each `getSomethingValue` accessor that returns a value of the requested type and issues a warning for objects of the wrong type, there is also a `getValueAsSomething` method (since qpdf 10.6) that returns false for objects of the wrong type and otherwise returns true and initializes a reference. These methods never generate type warnings and provide an alternative to explicitly checking the type of an object before calling an accessor method.

## Smart Pointers

This section describes changes to the use of smart pointers that were made in qpdf 10.6.0 and 11.0.0.

In qpdf 11.0.0, `PointerHolder` was replaced with `std::shared_ptr` in qpdf’s public API. A backward-compatible `PointerHolder` class has been provided that makes it possible for most code to remain unchanged. `PointerHolder` may eventually be removed from qpdf entirely, but this will not happen for a while to make it easier for people who need to support multiple versions of qpdf.

In 10.6.0, some enhancements were made to `PointerHolder` to ease the transition. These intermediate steps are relevant only for versions 10.6.0 through 10.6.3 but can still help with incremental modification of code.

The `POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION` preprocessor symbol was introduced in qpdf 10.6.0 to help people transition from `PointerHolder` to `std::shared_ptr`. If you don’t define this, you will get a compiler warning. Defining it to any value will suppress the warning. An explanation appears below of the different possible values for this symbol and what they mean.

Starting in qpdf 11.0.0, including `<qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>` defines the symbol `POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER`. This can be used with conditional compilation to make it possible to support different versions of qpdf.

The rest of this section provides the details.

### Transitional Enhancements to PointerHolder

In qpdf 10.6.0, some changes were to `PointerHolder` to make it easier to prepare for the transition to `std::shared_ptr`. These enhancements also make it easier to incrementally upgrade your code. The following changes were made to `PointerHolder` to make its behavior closer to that of `std::shared_ptr`:

- `get()` was added as an alternative to `getPointer()`

- `use_count()` was added as an alternative to `getRefcount()`

- A new global helper function `make_pointer_holder` behaves similarly to `std::make_shared`, so you can use `make_pointer_holder<T>(args...)` to create a `PointerHolder<T>` with `new T(args...)` as the pointer.

- A new global helper function `make_array_pointer_holder` takes a size and creates a `PointerHolder` to an array. It is a counterpart to the newly added `QUtil::make_shared_array` method, which does the same thing with a `std::shared_ptr`.

`PointerHolder` had a long-standing bug: a `const PointerHolder<T>` would only provide a `T const*` with its `getPointer` method. This is incorrect and is not how standard library C++ smart pointers or regular pointers behave. The correct semantics would be that a `const PointerHolder<T>` would not accept a new pointer after being created (`PointerHolder` has always behaved correctly in this way) but would still allow you to modify the item being pointed to. If you don’t want to mutate the thing it points to, use `PointerHolder<T const>` instead. The new `get()` method behaves correctly. It is therefore not exactly the same as `getPointer()`, but it does behave the way `get()` behaves with `std::shared_ptr`. This shouldn’t make any difference to any correctly written code.

### Differences between `PointerHolder` and `std::shared_ptr`

Here is a list of things you need to think about when migrating from `PointerHolder` to `std::shared_ptr`. After the list, we will discuss how to address each one using the `POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION` preprocessor symbol or other C++ coding techniques.

- `PointerHolder<T>` has an implicit constructor that takes a `T*`, which means you can assign a `T*` directly to a `PointerHolder<T>` or pass a `T*` to a function that expects a `PointerHolder<T>` as a parameter. `std::shared_ptr<T>` does not have this behavior, though you can still assign `nullptr` to a `std::shared_ptr<T>` and compare `nullptr` with a `std::shared_ptr<T>`. Here are some examples of how you might need to change your code:

  Old code:

        PointerHolder<X> x_p;
        X* x = new X();
        x_p = x;

  New code:

        auto x_p = std::make_shared<X>();
        X* x = x_p.get();
        // or, less safe, but closer:
        std::shared_ptr<X> x_p;
        X* x = new X();
        x_p = std::shared_ptr<X>(x);

  Old code:

        PointerHolder<Base> base_p;
        Derived* derived = new Derived();
        base_p = derived;

  New code:

        std::shared_ptr<Base> base_p;
        Derived* derived = new Derived();
        base_p = std::shared_ptr<Base>(derived);

- `PointerHolder<T>` has `getPointer()` to get the underlying pointer. It also has the seldom-used `getRefcount()` method to get the reference count. `std::shared_ptr<T>` has `get()` and `use_count()`. In qpdf 10.6, `PointerHolder<T>` also has `get()` and `use_count()`.

### Addressing the Differences

If you are not ready to take action yet, you can `#define POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION 0` before including any qpdf header file or add the definition of that symbol to your build. This will provide the backward-compatible `PointerHolder` API without any deprecation warnings. This should be a temporary measure as `PointerHolder` may disappear in the future. If you need to be able to support newer and older versions of qpdf, there are other options, explained below.

Note that, even with `0`, you should rebuild and test your code. There may be compiler errors if you have containers of `PointerHolder`, but most code should compile without any changes. There are no uses of containers of `PointerHolder` in qpdf’s API.

There are two significant things you can do to minimize the impact of switching from `PointerHolder` to `std::shared_ptr`:

- Use `auto` and `decltype` whenever possible when working with `PointerHolder` variables that are exchanged with the qpdf API.

- Use the `POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION` preprocessor symbol to identify and resolve the differences described above.

To use `POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION`, you will need to `#define` it before including any qpdf header files or specify its value as part of your build. The table below describes the values of `POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION`. This information is also summarized in `include/qpdf/PointerHolder.hh`, so you will have it handy without consulting this manual.

POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION values
value | meaning
--- | ---
undefined | Same as `0` but issues a warning
`0` | Provide a backward compatible `PointerHolder` and suppress all deprecation warnings; supports all prior qpdf versions
`1` | Make the `PointerHolder<T>(T*)` constructor explicit; resulting code supports all prior qpdf versions
`2` | Deprecate `getPointer()` and `getRefcount()`; requires qpdf 10.6.0 or later.
`3` | Deprecate all uses of `PointerHolder`; requires qpdf 11.0.0 or later
`4` | Disable all functionality from `qpdf/PointerHolder.hh` so that `#include`-ing it has no effect other than defining `POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER`; requires qpdf 11.0.0 or later.

Based on the above, here is a procedure for preparing your code. This is the procedure that was used for the qpdf code itself.

You can do these steps without breaking support for qpdf versions before 10.6.0:

- Find all occurrences of `PointerHolder` in the code. See whether any of them can just be outright replaced with `std::shared_ptr` or `std::unique_ptr`. If you have been using qpdf prior to adopting C++11 and were using `PointerHolder` as a general-purpose smart pointer, you may have cases that can be replaced in this way.

  For example:

  - Simple `PointerHolder<T>` construction can be replaced with either the equivalent `std::shared_ptr<T>` construction or, if the constructor is public, with `std::make_shared<T>(args...)`. If you are creating a smart pointer that is never copied, you may be able to use `std::unique_ptr<T>` instead.

  - Array allocations will have to be rewritten.

    Allocating a `PointerHolder` to an array looked like this:

        PointerHolder<X> p(true, new X[n]);

    To allocate a `std::shared_ptr` to an array:

        auto p = std::shared_ptr<X>(new X[n], std::default_delete<X[]>());
        // If you don't mind using QUtil, there's QUtil::make_shared_array<X>(n).
        // If you are using c++20, you can use std::make_shared<X[]>(n)
        // to get a std::shared_ptr<X[]> instead of a std::shared_ptr<X>.

    To allocate a `std::unique_ptr` to an array:

        auto p = std::make_unique<X[]>(n);
        // or, if X has a private constructor:
        auto p = std::unique_ptr<X[]>(new X[n]);

- If a `PointerHolder<T>` can’t be replaced with a standard library smart pointer because it is used with an older qpdf API call, perhaps it can be declared using `auto` or `decltype` so that, when building with a newer qpdf API changes, your code will just need to be recompiled.

- `#define POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION 1` to enable deprecation warnings for all implicit constructions of `PointerHolder<T>` from a plain `T*`. When you find one, explicitly construct the `PointerHolder<T>`.

  - Old code:

        PointerHolder<X> x = new X();

  - New code:

        auto x = PointerHolder<X>(new X(...)); // all versions of qpdf
        // or, if X(...) is public:
        auto x = make_pointer_holder<X>(...); // only 10.6 and above

    Other examples appear above.

If you need to support older versions of qpdf than 10.6, this is as far as you can go without conditional compilation.

Starting in qpdf 11.0.0, including `<qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>` defines the symbol `POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER`. If you want to support older versions of qpdf and still transition so that the backward-compatible `PointerHolder` is not in use, you can separate old code and new code by testing with the `POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER` preprocessor symbol, as in

    #include <qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>
    #ifdef POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER
    std::shared_ptr<X> x;
    #else
    PointerHolder<X> x;
    #endif // POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER
    x = decltype(x)(new X())

or

    #include <qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>
    #ifdef POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER
    auto x_p = std::make_shared<X>();
    X* x = x_p.get();
    #else
    auto x_p = PointerHolder<X>(new X());
    X* x = x_p.getPointer();
    #endif // POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER
    x_p->doSomething();
    x->doSomethingElse();

If you don’t need to support older versions of qpdf, you can proceed with these steps without protecting changes with the preprocessor symbol. Here are the remaining changes.

- `#define POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION 2` to enable deprecation of `getPointer()` and `getRefcount()`

- Replace `getPointer()` with `get()` and `getRefcount()` with `use_count()`. These methods were not present prior to 10.6.0.

When you have gotten your code to compile cleanly with `POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION=2`, you are well on your way to being ready for eliminating `PointerHolder` entirely. The code at this point will not work with any qpdf version prior to 10.6.0.

To support qpdf 11.0.0 and newer and remove `PointerHolder` from your code, continue with the following steps:

- Replace all occurrences of `PointerHolder` with `std::shared_ptr` except in the literal statement `#include <qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>`

- Replace all occurrences of `make_pointer_holder` with `std::make_shared`

- Replace all occurrences of `make_array_pointer_holder` with `QUtil::make_shared_array`. You will need to include `<qpdf/QUtil.hh>` if you haven’t already done so.

- Make sure `<memory>` is included wherever you were including `<qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>`.

- If you were using any array `PointerHolder<T>` objects, replace them as above. You can let the compiler find these for you.

- `#define POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION 3` to enable deprecation of all `PointerHolder<T>` construction.

- Build and test. Fix any remaining issues.

- If not supporting older versions of qpdf, remove all references to `<qpdf/PointerHolder.hh>`. Otherwise, you will still need to include it but can `#define POINTERHOLDER_TRANSITION 4` to prevent `PointerHolder` from being defined. The `POINTERHOLDER_IS_SHARED_POINTER` symbol will still be defined.

### Historical Background

Since its inception, the qpdf library used its own smart pointer class, `PointerHolder`. The `PointerHolder` class was originally created long before `std::shared_ptr` existed, and qpdf itself didn’t start requiring a C++11 compiler until version 9.1.0 released in late 2019. With current C++ versions, it is no longer desirable for qpdf to have its own smart pointer class.