Text Redactor

TextRedactor draws opaque rectangles over sensitive content. It supports both coordinate-based area redaction and text-search-based redaction. Redactions must be explicitly applied before saving.

Note: This is visual redaction — the underlying text bytes remain in the PDF stream data. The redaction rectangles visually obscure content but do not remove it from the file.

Opening a PDF

use Phpdftk\Pdf\Toolkit\TextRedactor;

// From file
$redactor = TextRedactor::open('contract.pdf');

// From string
$redactor = TextRedactor::openString($pdfBytes);

// Encrypted PDF
$redactor = TextRedactor::open('secured.pdf', password: 'secret');

Area redaction

Specify a rectangle by page number (1-based), x, y, width, and height in points:

$redactor->redactArea(1, 72, 700, 200, 20);  // page 1
$redactor->redactArea(2, 100, 500, 150, 14); // page 2

Text redaction

Literal string

Search for a literal string and redact all occurrences:

$redactor->redactText('John Smith');

Restrict to specific pages:

use Phpdftk\Pdf\Toolkit\PageSelector;

$redactor->redactText('SSN: 123-45-6789', PageSelector::pages(1));

Regex pattern

$redactor->redactPattern('/\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}/'); // SSN pattern
$redactor->redactPattern('/\b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,}\b/i'); // email

Redaction color

The default color is black. Change it before applying:

$redactor->setRedactionColor(1.0, 1.0, 1.0); // white
$redactor->setRedactionColor(0.5, 0.5, 0.5); // gray

Applying and saving

Redactions are staged until apply() is called. This two-step process lets you review the redaction count before committing:

$redactor
    ->redactText('CONFIDENTIAL')
    ->redactArea(1, 72, 700, 200, 20)
    ->apply();

echo $redactor->getRedactionCount(); // number of redaction rectangles

$redactor->save('redacted.pdf');

Calling save() or toBytes() without first calling apply() will throw a RuntimeException.

Complete example

TextRedactor::open('contract.pdf')
    ->redactText('Jane Doe')
    ->redactPattern('/\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}/')
    ->redactArea(3, 50, 600, 300, 30)
    ->setRedactionColor(0.0, 0.0, 0.0)
    ->apply()
    ->save('redacted.pdf');

Document info

$redactor->getPageCount();     // int
$redactor->getRedactionCount(); // int (after apply)

Escape hatch

$reader = $redactor->getReader(); // PdfReader