Create a PDF Document using Java PDFbox

Weekend Time,  Scratching my head to learn something new.
I'm glad I did something at least i feel i have. :-)

Something was in my head, what if i need to code to create a PDF document at some point in my life ???

I was aware of Apache's POI being used to handle Excel Sheets, tried a sample script then thought what if i need to create a pdf file.

I am glad i tried it. Okay, lets get on with why we are or rather why you are here.
Check Out :   Apache PDFBox

Download link for the jar file :  http://pdfbox.apache.org/download.html

I downloaded the version pdfbox-app-1.5.0.jar. Please always download a stable download, avoids we being testers where you expecting things to work for first time. You would not be wanting to do a QA job right ;-) especially when it's someone else's product.

Java Development Environment :

I Choose Eclipse, it makes my work simple. I strongly suggest readers to use the same, saves a lot of time researching how stuff works ( avoids the ant and stuff that scare you over the net).

• Create a New Project named "PDF Test"
• In the Package Explorer, Right Click > Properties
• Go to Java Build Path
• Select Libraries Tab
• Click on "Add External Jars"

Lets say you have saved your jar  pdfbox-app-1.5.0.jar at location D:\Jars\pdfbox-app-1.5.0.jar
Browse and select the jar.

Click Okay.
You are good to go.

Now Create a Sample Java file as follows. I've named it PDFTest


import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.pdfbox.exceptions.COSVisitorException;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.edit.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDFont;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType1Font;


public class PDFTest {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, COSVisitorException {
       
       
        PDDocument document =new PDDocument();
       
        PDPage page = new PDPage();
        document.addPage( page );
       
        PDFont font = PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD;
        PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page);
       
        contentStream.beginText();
        contentStream.setFont( font, 12 );
        //contentStream.moveTextPositionByAmount( 0, 700 );
        contentStream.moveTextPositionByAmount( 10, 700 );
        contentStream.drawString( "Hello World" );
        contentStream.endText();
        contentStream.close();

        document.save("D:\\BlankPage.pdf");
       
        document.close();
        document.close();


    }
}


You can view the file under the D drive in the above mentioned example.

I hope this gives a confidence boost that at least you can print a Hello World into a PDF file before exploring it further.

I tried extending to create table like data, so I've taken a sample version of it to create a Single Cell with Value in it.

http://www.javaapionline.com/2011/06/create-table-data-into-cell-in-pdf.html
Ciao for now
Regards,
Ajith Moni