Adobe® PDF Library

.NET Core Sample Programs


The Adobe PDF Library (APDFL) is an Application Programming Interface (API) designed to allow programmers to work with the Adobe PDF file format.  The APDFL Software Development Kit (SDK) provides a method for software developers and vendors to build their own third-party systems that allow them to create, change, process, review, and otherwise work with PDF files. The Library is the same one that Adobe Acrobat is based on.

Datalogics provides a .NET Core interface to the Adobe PDF Library. This Interface offers a set of modules for the Library that allow programmers working in C# or other languages supported by .NET Core to take advantage of Adobe PDF Library tools and resources. This interface encapsulates the original Adobe PDF Library; the interface allows you to work with the original core library functions directly, and seamlessly, in .NET Core.

The Sample Programs

The Adobe PDF Library supports all of the languages that work with .NET Core, including C# and Visual Basic. The Adobe PDF Library provides a set of sample C# program files, stored under /DotNETCore/Sample_Source.

Most of the code samples in APDFL are designed to demonstrate how an API works by completing a simple programming task. You can open the sample .NET Core program files and review them in Microsoft Visual Studio 2019, Visual Studio Code, or a text editor on a Linux or macOS platform for reference, or you can copy parts of this code to use in your own programs.  You can also build and run sample programs from your Operating System command line.

For example, you would access this directory, where the sample program files are stored, to build and run the sample:


We assume a basic level of technical understanding of the PDF file format, though we seek to review the features of each of these sample programs carefully.

Many of these sample programs automatically generate an output file or set of files.  These output files, generally PDF or graphics files (JPG or BMP), are stored in the directory where the application has been run. If you run a sample program a second or third time, it will overwrite any output files that were created and stored earlier.  However, if you run a sample program, generate a PDF output file, and then open that PDF file and try to run that sample program again, you will see an error message.  The program will not be able to overwrite an existing output file if that file is currently open in Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat.

Note that the Forms Extension plug-in sample programs provided with the .NET Interface with the Adobe PDF Library are not available with .NET Core.

Building and Running .NET Core Sample Programs

Start from your DotNETCore directory, and change to the Sample_Source directory for the program you want to work with. Here is an example:

cd Sample_Source/Images/RasterizePage

Build a sample project file using the Debug|x64 configuration. Use the dotnet program command, which is used with .NET Core to build projects and run applications:

dotnet build -c Debug ./RasterizePage.csproj /p:Platform=x64

If you want to build a Release|x64 use this command syntax instead:

dotnet build -c Release ./RasterizePage.csproj /p:Platform=x64

Change to the Binaries directory:

cd ../../../Binaries

Run the application by specifying the .dll file. Note the .dll file is the .NET Core executable for all platforms:

dotnet ./RasterizePage.dll

Note: Adobe PDF Library dependencies are found in the DotNETCore/Binaries directory. Samples are setup to write their .NET Core .dll files to this directory along with any other dependencies, such as System.Drawing.Common.dll.


The NuGet Package is an open source package manager that can be installed with  Visual Studio. Depending on your configuration, you may see an error message related to the System.Drawing.Common dependency similar to this one when running some of the .NET Core sample programs provided with the Adobe PDF Library:

error NU1101: Unable to find package System.Drawing.Common. No packages exist with this id in source(s): Microsoft Visual Studio Offline Packages

If you have Visual Studio 2019 installed, go to Tools and Options, and NuGet Package Manager, and then select Package Sources. For Visual Studio 2019 on MacOS, go to the Preferences menu, select NuGet, and then select Sources.

Make sure that this option is checked:

Click OK.

If you don’t have Visual Studio 2019 installed, you need to edit the NuGet configuration file. This should be installed as part of .NET Core, or will be installed with an earlier version of Visual Studio. For Windows, this file is in this directory:


Where X is your root drive and %USERNAME% is your username, like this:


On a Linux or macOS platform, you find the file here:




Open NuGet.Config and add the following section to the file:

<add key="" value="" protocolVersion="3" />

Save the file and close it. This should resolve the error.