Creating PDF with Java and iText - Tutorial

iText is a Java library originally created by Bruno Lowagie which allows to create PDF, read PDF and manipulate them. The following tutorial will show how to create PDF files with iText. This tutorial assumes that you have basis Java and Eclipse knowledge.

iText has a hierarchical structure. The smallest text unit is a "Chunk" which is a String with a pre-defined font. A "Phrase" combines several Chunks and allows to define line spacing. "Paragraph" is a subclass of "Phrase" and allows to define more layout attributes, e.g. margins. The class "Anchor" is a subclass of "Paragraph" and serves as the basis for hyperlinks in the generated PDF.

2. Installation

Download the iText core binary from the webpage http://sourceforge.net/projects/itext/. The download contains one jar which is required if you want to use iText.

3. Create a PDF

Create a new Java project "de.vogella.itext.write" with the package "de.vogella.itext.write". Create a folder "lib" and put the iText library (jar file) into this folder. Add the jar to your classpath.

Create the following class "FirstPdf.java" . I assume that the code is pretty much self-explaining. I tried to add lots of comments to make it easier to understand. For more complex examples have a look at the iText Homepage.

package de.vogella.itext.write; import java.io.FileOutputStream; import java.util.Date; import com.itextpdf.text.Anchor; import com.itextpdf.text.BadElementException; import com.itextpdf.text.BaseColor; import com.itextpdf.text.Chapter; import com.itextpdf.text.Document; import com.itextpdf.text.DocumentException; import com.itextpdf.text.Element; import com.itextpdf.text.Font; import com.itextpdf.text.List; import com.itextpdf.text.ListItem; import com.itextpdf.text.Paragraph; import com.itextpdf.text.Phrase; import com.itextpdf.text.Section; import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfPCell; import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfPTable; import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter; public class FirstPdf  private static String FILE = "c:/temp/FirstPdf.pdf"; private static Font catFont = new Font(Font.FontFamily.TIMES_ROMAN, 18, Font.BOLD); private static Font redFont = new Font(Font.FontFamily.TIMES_ROMAN, 12, Font.NORMAL, BaseColor.RED); private static Font subFont = new Font(Font.FontFamily.TIMES_ROMAN, 16, Font.BOLD); private static Font smallBold = new Font(Font.FontFamily.TIMES_ROMAN, 12, Font.BOLD); public static void main(String[] args)  try  Document document = new Document(); PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(FILE)); document.open(); addMetaData(document); addTitlePage(document); addContent(document); document.close(); > catch (Exception e)  e.printStackTrace(); > > // iText allows to add metadata to the PDF which can be viewed in your Adobe // Reader // under File -> Properties private static void addMetaData(Document document)  document.addTitle("My first PDF"); document.addSubject("Using iText"); document.addKeywords("Java, PDF, iText"); document.addAuthor("Lars Vogel"); document.addCreator("Lars Vogel"); > private static void addTitlePage(Document document) throws DocumentException  Paragraph preface = new Paragraph(); // We add one empty line addEmptyLine(preface, 1); // Lets write a big header preface.add(new Paragraph("Title of the document", catFont)); addEmptyLine(preface, 1); // Will create: Report generated by: _name, _date preface.add(new Paragraph( "Report generated by: " + System.getProperty("user.name") + ", " + new Date(), //$NON-NLS-1$ //$NON-NLS-2$ //$NON-NLS-3$ smallBold)); addEmptyLine(preface, 3); preface.add(new Paragraph( "This document describes something which is very important ", smallBold)); addEmptyLine(preface, 8); preface.add(new Paragraph( "This document is a preliminary version and not subject to your license agreement or any other agreement with vogella.com ;-).", redFont)); document.add(preface); // Start a new page document.newPage(); > private static void addContent(Document document) throws DocumentException  Anchor anchor = new Anchor("First Chapter", catFont); anchor.setName("First Chapter"); // Second parameter is the number of the chapter Chapter catPart = new Chapter(new Paragraph(anchor), 1); Paragraph subPara = new Paragraph("Subcategory 1", subFont); Section subCatPart = catPart.addSection(subPara); subCatPart.add(new Paragraph("Hello")); subPara = new Paragraph("Subcategory 2", subFont); subCatPart = catPart.addSection(subPara); subCatPart.add(new Paragraph("Paragraph 1")); subCatPart.add(new Paragraph("Paragraph 2")); subCatPart.add(new Paragraph("Paragraph 3")); // add a list createList(subCatPart); Paragraph paragraph = new Paragraph(); addEmptyLine(paragraph, 5); subCatPart.add(paragraph); // add a table createTable(subCatPart); // now add all this to the document document.add(catPart); // Next section anchor = new Anchor("Second Chapter", catFont); anchor.setName("Second Chapter"); // Second parameter is the number of the chapter catPart = new Chapter(new Paragraph(anchor), 1); subPara = new Paragraph("Subcategory", subFont); subCatPart = catPart.addSection(subPara); subCatPart.add(new Paragraph("This is a very important message")); // now add all this to the document document.add(catPart); > private static void createTable(Section subCatPart) throws BadElementException  PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(3); // t.setBorderColor(BaseColor.GRAY); // t.setPadding(4); // t.setSpacing(4); // t.setBorderWidth(1); PdfPCell c1 = new PdfPCell(new Phrase("Table Header 1")); c1.setHorizontalAlignment(Element.ALIGN_CENTER); table.addCell(c1); c1 = new PdfPCell(new Phrase("Table Header 2")); c1.setHorizontalAlignment(Element.ALIGN_CENTER); table.addCell(c1); c1 = new PdfPCell(new Phrase("Table Header 3")); c1.setHorizontalAlignment(Element.ALIGN_CENTER); table.addCell(c1); table.setHeaderRows(1); table.addCell("1.0"); table.addCell("1.1"); table.addCell("1.2"); table.addCell("2.1"); table.addCell("2.2"); table.addCell("2.3"); subCatPart.add(table); > private static void createList(Section subCatPart)  List list = new List(true, false, 10); list.add(new ListItem("First point")); list.add(new ListItem("Second point")); list.add(new ListItem("Third point")); subCatPart.add(list); > private static void addEmptyLine(Paragraph paragraph, int number)  for (int i = 0; i  number; i++)  paragraph.add(new Paragraph(" ")); > > >

The resulting pdf should look like the following.