Document metadata

PDF documents can include metadata describing the document’s title, the author, the program that created the document, and so on. Metadata can be customised by providing a PDFMetadata object as the metadata optional parameter of the SaveAsPDF method.

The PDFMetadata class defines the following properties:

• string Title: the title of the document. Default: empty.
• string Subject: the subject of the document. Default: empty.
• string Author: the name of the person who created the document. Default: Environment.UserName.
• string Keywords: keywords for the document. Default: empty.
• string Creator: the program that created the document. Default: "VectSharp vX.Y.Z".
• string Producer: the program that took the document and converted it to PDF format. Default: "VectSharp.PDF vX.Y.Z".
• DateTime CreationDate: date of creation of the document, expressed locally to the CreationDateTimeZone. Default: DateTime.Now.
• TimeZoneInfo CreationDateTimeZone: time zone for the CreationDate. Default: TimeZoneInfo.Local.
• DateTime ModificationDate: date of the last modification of the document, expressed locally to the ModificationDateTimeZone. Default: DateTime.Now.
• TimeZoneInfo ModificationDateTimeZone: time zone for the ModificationDate. Default: TimeZoneInfo.Local.
• Dictionary<string, object> CustomProperties: you can use this dictionary to define custom document metadata properties. Default: null.
• bool ExcludeMetadata: if you do not wish to include any metadata in the document, set this to true. Default: false.

The following example shows how to create a PDF document with customised metadata.

using VectSharp;
using VectSharp.PDF;

// Create the document.
Document doc = new Document();

// Create the page and add it to the document.
Page pag = new Page(595, 842);
doc.Pages.Add(pag);

// Draw something on the page.
pag.Graphics.FillRectangle(20, 20, 555, 802, Colours.Red);

// Create the metadata object.
PDFMetadata pdfMetadata = new PDFMetadata()
{
    Title = "Document title",
    Subject = "Document subject",
    Author = "Your name",
    Keywords = "keyword1;keyword2",

    Creator = "Program that created the document",
    Producer = "Program that created the PDF",
    
    CreationDate = DateTime.Today,
    CreationDateTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.Local,

    ModificationDate = DateTime.Today,
    ModificationDateTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.Local
};

// Save the PDF document.
doc.SaveAsPDF("Metadata.pdf", metadata: pdfMetadata);

If you do not provide the metadata parameter to the SaveAsPDF method (or if it is set to null), the default values are used. If you wish to explicitly exclude metadata from the document, you need to provide a PDFMetadata object whose ExcludeMetadata property is false. The following example shows how to create a PDF document without any metadata.

using VectSharp;
using VectSharp.PDF;

// Create the document.
Document doc = new Document();

// Create the page and add it to the document.
Page pag = new Page(595, 842);
doc.Pages.Add(pag);

// Draw something on the page.
pag.Graphics.FillRectangle(20, 20, 555, 802, Colours.Red);

// Save the PDF document.
doc.SaveAsPDF("Metadata.pdf", metadata: new PDFMetadata() { ExcludeMetadata = true });