PDF::Reader::MalformedPDFError: Error occured while inflating a compressed stream (Zlib::DataError: invalid stored block lengths)

[Ashish Sethi]

Hello,

I would appreciate the resolution to this problem:

PDF::Reader::MalformedPDFError: Error occured while inflating a compressed stream (Zlib::DataError: invalid stored block lengths)

This happens when I try to extract PDF text.

The attached PDF could be opened in Acrobat Pro and I believe it is not a bad pdf.

TIA!

-Ashish

[Wayne Brissette]

Ashish: That PDF is a single page and when I tested it using:

reader = PDF::Reader.new("/Users/wayne/Downloads/Sample1.pdf")

reader.pages.each do |page|
  puts page.fonts
  puts page.text
  puts page.raw_content
end

I end up with:

{}
?????????????????????
q
/Fm0 Do
Q

So it had no clue about fonts. Which I noticed on a different project myself and makes me wonder if something has changed regarding type. The content of the PDF however was read and displayed without any issues. 

[Ashish Sethi]

Thanks, Wayne!

[Wayne Brissette]

One thing I do wonder. What are the permissions on that PDF? I have in
the past noticed some strange things when I was trying to read a
protected PDF (makes sense really).

Also, while it didn't come across in the email, the output was the
Japanese characters that were displayed on the PDF page.

-Wayne

[Ashish Sethi]

The PDF is not protected.

Thx!

[Wayne Brissette]

Did you get the full PDF to ever work?

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[James Healy]

Hi Ashish,

Can you post an example script that triggers this issue, and some
environment details (ruby version, windows/macos/linux, etc).

On my laptop (ruby 2.7, linux), I can extract the text:

$ pdf_text Sample1.pdf
「辻」と「辻」

James

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[Wayne Brissette]

James:
That mirrors my experience as well, which is why I asked if he ever got
it to work using Mac OS and Ruby 2.7.1.

-Wayne

[Ashish Sethi]

Hello James and Wayne!

Sorry for delayed reply.

Please find attached a new PDF and give it a try.

What I am trying to do:

reader = PDF::Reader.new("sample.pdf")

    reader.pages.each do |page|

      puts page.fonts

      puts page.text

    end

I can read the fonts but I get the following error when trying to read text:

"Error occured while inflating a compressed stream (Zlib::DataError: invalid stored block lengths)"

I am using:

Ruby version: ruby 2.6.5p114 (2019-10-01 revision 67812) [x64-mingw32]

Gem: pdf-reader 2.0.0

machine info: Win 10 x64

Thx!

[Wayne Brissette]

I'm not an expert in PDF data structures. But there is something wrong here. If I use this sample it too gives me the same error. If I then open it in any PDF reader, save it using a different name (you could overwrite the original I suppose), then run the simple script, it works. So this isn't copy protected because it doesn't ask you for a PW at any time. However, it's certainly in some compressed format that the Zlib library/Gem doesn't recognize. Maybe James will have more insight for you.

-Wayne

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[Ashish Sethi]

@James,

Any inputs?

Thx!

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[James Healy]

Hi Ashish,

The page in that PDF has it's content defined in 3 objects, and one of them claims to be Flate compressed. However, I believe the compression is broken.

If I open the PDF in firefox (which uses pdf.js), I get console warnings that the zlib compressed data has invalid check bits in the header:

You can see that some text still renders though. pdf.js seems to just skip over the broken stream and attempts to render the page anyway.

I tried a similar approach in pdf-reader, and it works for your file. I made this code change:

    diff --git a/lib/pdf/reader/filter/flate.rb b/lib/pdf/reader/filter/flate.rb
    index 2489757..aefbc45 100644
    --- a/lib/pdf/reader/filter/flate.rb
    +++ b/lib/pdf/reader/filter/flate.rb
    @@ -32,8 +34,9 @@ class PDF::Reader
             Depredict.new(@options).filter(deflated)
           rescue Exception => e
             # Oops, there was a problem inflating the stream  
    -        raise MalformedPDFError,
    -          "Error occured while inflating a compressed stream (#{e.class.to_s}: #{e.to_s})"
    +        #raise MalformedPDFError,
    +        #  "Error occured while inflating a compressed stream (#{e.class.to_s}: #{e.to_s})"
    +        return ""
       end
     end
   end

.. and the text is extracted:

    $ ruby -Ilib bin/pdf_text sample\(1\).pdf
    DocuSign Envelope ID: 45BFED27-0910-4248-8030-C853B0DE0248

                                              「辻」と「辻」

I'm not sure if that's a general approach I want to commit though. It may not work as well on other PDFs.

James

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[Ashish Sethi]

Thank you, James!

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