PDF/A validation fails in the test environment, but works in production

[christian_kulesza]

Hello PDFBox Community,

The validation of a PDF/A - 1b file fails in the test but is successful in
production with the same data. What could be the reason for the different
results? The error message indicates that the metadata could not be read
because it is "nested". The metadata is only set in the conversion method
and there should be no differences between test and production. Do you have
any ideas as to why this could be?

 

## Conversion process

1.      JxBrowser creates a file from HTML
2.      PDFBox converts to PDF/A - 1b

 

## Validation Error

Jun 23, 2025 2:09:39 PM org.verapdf.gf.model.impl.pd.GFPDMetadata
getXMPPackage

WARNING: Problems with parsing metadata. Nested content not allowed with
rdf:resource or property attributes

org.verapdf.xmp.XMPException: Nested content not allowed with rdf:resource
or property attributes

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_EmptyPropertyElement(ParseRDF.java:841)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_PropertyElement(ParseRDF.java:438)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_PropertyElementList(ParseRDF.java:312)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_NodeElement(ParseRDF.java:192)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_ResourcePropertyElement(ParseRDF.java:584)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_PropertyElement(ParseRDF.java:471)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_PropertyElementList(ParseRDF.java:312)

              at
org.verapdf.xmp.impl.ParseRDF.rdf_NodeElement(ParseRDF.java:192)

 

## Convert implementation

static ByteArrayOutputStream convert(File file, PDFBuilder.PDFFlavour
pdfFlavour) throws Exception {
    try (PDDocument document = PDDocument.load(file)) {
        PDFAFlavour veraPDFFlavour =
PDFAUtils.pdfAFlavourMapper(pdfFlavour);

        XMPMetadata xmpMetaData = XMPMetadata.createXMPMetadata();
        PDDocumentInformation docInfo = document.getDocumentInformation();
        createPDFAIdentificationSchema(xmpMetaData, veraPDFFlavour);
        createDublinCoreSchema(docInfo, xmpMetaData);
        createXMPBasicSchema(docInfo, xmpMetaData);
        createAndAddAdobePDFSchema(docInfo, xmpMetaData);

        PDDocumentCatalog documentCatalog = document.getDocumentCatalog();
        PDMetadata metadata = new PDMetadata(document);

        XmpSerializer serializer = new XmpSerializer();
        ByteArrayOutputStream byteArrayOutputStream = new
ByteArrayOutputStream();
        serializer.serialize(xmpMetaData, byteArrayOutputStream, true);

        metadata.importXMPMetadata(byteArrayOutputStream.toByteArray());
        documentCatalog.setMetadata(metadata);

        PDCIDSetEmbedder.setPDFontDescriptorCIDSet(document);
        InputStream colorProfile =
PDF2PDFAConverter.class.getResourceAsStream("/resources/sRGB2014.icc");
        PDOutputIntent pdOutputIntent = createOutputIntent(document,
colorProfile);
        documentCatalog.addOutputIntent(pdOutputIntent);

        ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        document.save(out);
        document.close();

        return out;
    } catch (IOException | BadFieldValueException | TransformerException |
IllegalArgumentException exception) {
        throw new PDFAConverterException(exception.getCause());
    }
}