Repair Simple Cross-Reference Table

Updated on Feb 19, 2026

Product Version	Product	Author
2020.1.316	RadPdfProcessing	Martin Velikov

Description

How to repair a PDF document with invalid Cross-Reference(XREF) table offset.

Solution

The provided code snippets demonstrates how to repair an invalid XREF table offset by using the RepairDocumentWithSimpleCrossReferenceTable method.

The provided solution, however, can handle only simple cases in which the document contains a single XREF table.

csharp

	RadFixedDocument document;

	string filePath = "add-the-path-to-your-file";

	using (Stream originalFile = File.OpenRead(filePath))
	{
		MemoryStream repairedDocument = this.RepairDocumentWithSimpleCrossReferenceTable(originalFile);
		using (repairedDocument)
		{
			document = new PdfFormatProvider().Import(repairedDocument);
		}
	}

Repair Document With Simple Cross-Reference Table

csharp

	public MemoryStream RepairDocumentWithSimpleCrossReferenceTable(Stream corruptedPdfFile)
	{
		string xrefKeyword = "xref";
		long xrefIndex = corruptedPdfFile.IndexOf(xrefKeyword);
		corruptedPdfFile.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
		MemoryStream repairedDocument = new MemoryStream();
		corruptedPdfFile.CopyTo(repairedDocument);

		corruptedPdfFile.Seek(xrefIndex, SeekOrigin.Begin);
		corruptedPdfFile.ReadLine();
		string line = corruptedPdfFile.ReadLine();
		string[] tokens = line.Split(' ');
		string secondToken = tokens[1].Trim();
		int numberOfObjects = int.Parse(secondToken);
		corruptedPdfFile.ReadLine();
		long nextLinePosition = corruptedPdfFile.Position;

		for (int pdfId = 1; pdfId < numberOfObjects; pdfId++)
		{
			repairedDocument.Seek(nextLinePosition, SeekOrigin.Begin);
			long pdfOffset = corruptedPdfFile.IndexOf(string.Format("{0} 0 obj", pdfId));
			repairedDocument.Write(string.Format("{0} 00000 n", pdfOffset.ToString().PadLeft(10, '0')));

			corruptedPdfFile.Seek(nextLinePosition, SeekOrigin.Begin);
			corruptedPdfFile.ReadLine();
			nextLinePosition = corruptedPdfFile.Position;
		}

		long startXrefPosition = corruptedPdfFile.IndexOf("startxref");
		corruptedPdfFile.Seek(startXrefPosition, SeekOrigin.Begin);
		corruptedPdfFile.ReadLine();
		long xrefOffsetPosition = corruptedPdfFile.Position;
		string corruptedOffset = corruptedPdfFile.ReadLine();
		repairedDocument.Seek(xrefOffsetPosition, SeekOrigin.Begin);
		repairedDocument.Write(xrefIndex.ToString().PadRight(corruptedOffset.Length));

		return repairedDocument;
	}

Extensions class providing some static methods used in RepairDocumentWithSimpleCrossReferenceTable method

csharp

	public static class PdfStreamExtensions
	{
		private const byte LineFeed = (byte)'\n';
		private const byte CarriageReturn = (byte)'\r';
		private static readonly Encoding PdfEncoding = Encoding.UTF8;

		public static void Write(this Stream stream, string text)
		{
			byte[] bytes = PdfEncoding.GetBytes(text);
			stream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
		}

		public static long IndexOf(this Stream stream, string text)
		{
			byte[] bytes = PdfEncoding.GetBytes(text);

			return stream.IndexOf(bytes);
		}

		public static long IndexOf(this Stream stream, byte[] byteSequence)
		{
			stream.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

			int byteSequenceIndexToCheck = 0;

			while (!IsEndOfStream(stream))
			{
				byte b = (byte)stream.ReadByte();

				if (b.Equals(byteSequence[byteSequenceIndexToCheck]))
				{
					byteSequenceIndexToCheck++;
				}
				else if (byteSequenceIndexToCheck != 0)
				{
					stream.Seek(-byteSequenceIndexToCheck, SeekOrigin.Current);
					byteSequenceIndexToCheck = 0;
				}

				if (byteSequenceIndexToCheck == byteSequence.Length)
				{
					long oldPosition = stream.Position;
					stream.Seek(-(byteSequence.Length + 1), SeekOrigin.Current);
					byte previousByte = (byte)stream.ReadByte();
					stream.Seek(oldPosition , SeekOrigin.Begin);

					if (previousByte == 10 || previousByte == 13 || previousByte == 20)
					{
						break;
					}
					else
					{
						byteSequenceIndexToCheck = 0;
					}
				}
			}

			if (byteSequenceIndexToCheck == byteSequence.Length)
			{
				long startPosition = stream.Position - byteSequenceIndexToCheck;

				return startPosition;
			}
			else
			{
				return -1;
			}
		}

		public static string ReadLine(this Stream stream)
		{
			StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
			byte b;
			while (!IsEndOfStream(stream) && !IsLineFeed(b = (byte)stream.ReadByte()))
			{
				if (b != CarriageReturn)
				{
					stringBuilder.Append((char)b);
				}
				else if (!IsEndOfStream(stream) && !IsLineFeed(b = stream.Peek()))
				{
					break;
				}
			}

			return stringBuilder.ToString();
		}

		public static byte Peek(this Stream stream)
		{
			byte b = (byte)stream.ReadByte();
			stream.Seek(-1, SeekOrigin.Current);

			return b;
		}

		private static bool IsLineFeed(byte b)
		{
			return b == LineFeed;
		}

		private static bool IsEndOfStream(Stream stream)
		{
			return stream.Position >= stream.Length;
		}
	}