Attachments in Flutter PDF

14 Dec 20243 minutes to read

The Syncfusion^®
Flutter PDF provides support for file attachments in PDF documents.

Attachments can contain any kind of file with detailed information.

Adding an attachment to a PDF document

You can add a file attachment to a PDF document using the PdfAttachment class. The following code example shows this.

DART

//Creates a new PDF document
PdfDocument document = PdfDocument();

//Create and add attachment to the PDF document
document.attachments.add(PdfAttachment(
    'input.txt', File('input.txt').readAsBytesSync(),
    description: 'Text File', mimeType: 'application/txt'));

//Saves the document
File('output.pdf').writeAsBytes(await document.save());

//Disposes the document
document.dispose();

You can also add file attachment as a base 64 string using the PdfAttachment class. The following code example shows this.

DART

//Creates a new PDF document
PdfDocument document = PdfDocument();

//Create and add attachment to the PDF document
document.attachments.add(PdfAttachment.fromBase64String(
    'input.txt', 'SGVsbG8gV29ybGQ=',
    description: 'Text File', mimeType: 'application/txt'));

//Saves the document
File('output.pdf').writeAsBytes(await document.save());

//Disposes the document
document.dispose();

The Syncfusion^®
Flutter PDF also provides support for adding the attachments to an existing PDF document. The following code example shows the same.

DART

//Loads an existing PDF document
PdfDocument document =
    PdfDocument(inputBytes: File('input.pdf').readAsBytesSync());

//Create and add attachment to the PDF document
document.attachments.add(PdfAttachment(
    'input.txt', File('input.txt').readAsBytesSync(),
    description: 'Text File', mimeType: 'application/txt'));

//Saves the document
File('output.pdf').writeAsBytes(await document.save());

//Disposes the document
document.dispose();

Removing attachments from an existing PDF

You can remove the attachments from the existing document by using the remove method, as shown in the following code example.

DART

//Loads an existing PDF document
PdfDocument document =
    PdfDocument(inputBytes: File('input.pdf').readAsBytesSync());

//Gets the attachment from the loaded document
PdfAttachment attachment = document.attachments[0];

//Removes the attachment
document.attachments.remove(attachment);

//Removes the attachment from a specific index
document.attachments.removeAt(1);

//Saves the document
File('output.pdf').writeAsBytes(await document.save());

//Disposes the document
document.dispose();

Extracting and saving an attachment to the disc

The ^®
Flutter PDF provides support for extracting the attachments and saving them to the disk. The following code example explains how to extract and save an attachment.

DART

//Loads an existing PDF document
PdfDocument document =
    PdfDocument(inputBytes: File('input.pdf').readAsBytesSync());

//Gets the attachment collection
PdfAttachmentCollection attachmentCollection = document.attachments;

//Iterates the attachments
for (int i = 0; i < attachmentCollection.count; i++) {
  //Extracts the attachment and saves it to the disk
  File(attachmentCollection[i].fileName)
      .writeAsBytesSync(attachmentCollection[i].data);
}

//Saves the document
File('output.pdf').writeAsBytes(await document.save());

//Disposes the document
document.dispose();