PDFBox NoClassDefFoundError PDDocument

Question

I am getting a NoClassDefFoundError on the PDDocument class when trying to read a PDF file with PDFBox. Here is the error I am getting:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/pdfbox/pdmodel/PDDocument
        at readpdf.ReadPDF.main(ReadPDF.java:27)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.BuiltinClassLoader.loadClass(BuiltinClassLoader.java:581)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoaders.java:178)
        at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:522)
        ... 1 more

Here is the code that generates the error:

```
      try (PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(new File(pdfFile))) {
            PDFTextStripper textStripper = new PDFTextStripper();
            // Get total page count of the PDF document
            int numberOfPages = document.getNumberOfPages();
            //set the first page to be extracted
            textStripper.setStartPage(1);
            // set the last page to be extracted
            textStripper.setEndPage(numberOfPages);
            String text = textStripper.getText(document);
            System.out.println(text);
        }
```

Here are my imports just in case they could be an issue:

```
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.text.PDFTextStripper;
```

edit: Here is the command I use to run the program from the windows command window -> java -jar readPdf.jar pdfFile.pdf I added the following jar files as library files in Netbeans when I first started building the program, pdfbox-20.0.20.jar, fontbox-20.0.20.jar, and commons-logging-1.2.jar. I am not using Maven, still trying to learn how to use it. Netbeans version 11.0 Windows 10 Corretto OpenJDK 11.0.7

Which java version are you using? How are you running your code? Are you running it from an IDE or from a command line? — Abra
I am using Corretto OpenJDK 11.0.7 in the Netbeans IDE version 11.0. I am running my command from the command line in windows 10. — Zugor
@Zugor in Netbeans, rightclick on the project, then Properties, then Libraries, then add pdfbox and fontbox jar there. (Assuming you don't use maven) — Tilman Hausherr
edit your question and post the command you use to run your java program. — Abra

Zugor Zugor · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-17T17:07:40

The problem was the libraries were missing. For some reason Netbeans 11 was creating a library properties file and a directory called copy libs but not copying the libs to the directory nor was it creating a lib directory in the dist directory when I built the project. I attempted to find the proper configuration but was unsuccessful. I finally downloaded version 12 of NetBeans and recreated the project from scratch and the problem disappeared. Now my libraries are copied into the lib directory when I build the project and I no longer get errors.

PDFBox NoClassDefFoundError PDDocument

1 Answers