Dummy PDF file of any size

A dummy PDF is a real, valid PDF whose contents do not matter, used to test whatever handles PDFs: upload forms and their size limits, document viewers, e-signature flows, thumbnail and preview generation, text extraction, and storage quotas. Each page here carries its page number, "Page 3 of 50", so a viewer or processor that skips or reorders pages is easy to catch.

Because the file is built to the byte, the same tool covers the upload limit boundaries: a PDF exactly at the limit, one byte under and one byte over.

For a limit of 10 MB, test three files: 9,999,999 bytes, which must be accepted; 10,000,000 bytes, where the requirement has to say whether the limit itself is allowed; and 10,000,001 bytes, which must be rejected with a clear message. Then repeat with the binary values, 10,485,760 and 10,485,761 bytes, because the front end and the server often disagree on what a megabyte is.

Check where the limit is enforced, too. A limit checked only in the browser can be bypassed, so the server has to reject the oversized file on its own, and the error has to reach the user rather than appearing as a generic failure or a timeout.

File size and page count stress different things. A large file with few pages tests transfer, storage and size limits. A small file with many pages tests rendering, pagination and anything that processes page by page, such as preview generation or text extraction, where a 2,000-page document can expose timeouts and memory limits that a large single-page file never reaches.

Create both kinds: the same size with 1 page and with hundreds, and the same page count at 100 KB and at 50 MB.

A PDF lists the position of every object in a cross-reference table at the end of the file. The padding goes into an extra object that no page refers to, and the table is written after it with the correct positions, so every PDF reader opens the file normally and the padding is never shown. The result is a standard PDF 1.4 file of exactly the size asked for.