Debenu Quick PDF Library 9 Developer Guide

API Overview
Debenu Quick PDF Library has almost 600 hundred functions that let you do about just about
everything with PDF files. The API uses a flat structure, so to help you find the functions you
need the functions are broken down into groups in our documentation.
Function groups
In our documentation functions are broken down into different groups -- although functions can
belong to multiple groups -- to make it easier to keep track of them. It’s important to know that
these function groups don’t necessarily reveal much about the structure of PDF since they’re
just useful groupings that we thought of.
The different function groups can be seen in the online function reference and as bookmarks in
the PDF version of the function reference.
What you should know
To save you time we’ve compiled a list of things you might want to be familiar with prior to using
Debenu Quick PDF Library. You don’t necessarily need to know all of this information if you just
want to do something similar, but if you’re going to be making active use of a bunch of different
functions in the library then this information could be useful to know.
Unlock the library
The UnlockKey function needs to be called and the return value checked otherwise most other
functions called later will fail. More info here
Check functions for return values
Always check the return value of the important functions such as LoadFromFile because if this
function fails the subsequent function calls will fail to. Every single function returns a value.
Checking for return values is not a requirement, but it can be immensely useful in ensuring the
robustness of your code and debugging.
If a function is not documented as having a return value then you can assume that a return
value of one (1) indicates successful. Zero (0) or other values could indicate an error or it could
be returning a valid handle or ID.
Memory and direct access functions
Function names that start with DA indicate that the function is a direct access function.
Functions that do not have this pre-fix are memory functions. Direct access and memory
functions cannot be used together. Combining them in your code will result in your code not
working correctly. More info here.
The DA functions are primarily used for PDF documents that are very large and contain
thousands of pages. They are generally faster for these larger documents because the
document does not need to be loaded into memory. For file sizes under 500 MB or under a few
thousand pages the speed differences are negligible.