How do I create a PDF document using iText PDF?

This example is the first example of the iText PDF series, we are going to start by learning to use the iText PDF library to create a PDF document. We will see how to use the Document class, getting an instance of PdfWriter, creating a simple Paragraph and set the text alignment and the font.

The basic steps to produce a PDF documents are:

  • Create a Document object that represents a PDF document.
  • The PdfWrite object that need the Document and an OutputStream object write the content of the PDF we added to the Document into a PDF file.
  • We add a paragraph into the Document instance using the Paragraph object.
  • Finally, we need to close the document by calling the Document.close() method.

And here is a code example that demonstrate the creation of a PDF document.

package org.kodejava.itextpdf;

import com.itextpdf.text.*;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfWriter;

import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;

public class DocumentCreate {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create a new document.
        Document document = new Document();
        try {
            // Get an instance of PdfWriter and create a HelloWorld.pdf
            // file as an output.
            PdfWriter.getInstance(document,
                    new FileOutputStream("HelloWorld.pdf"));
            document.open();

            // Create our first paragraph for the pdf document to be
            // created. We also set the alignment and the font of the
            // paragraph.
            String text = "Kode Java website provides beginners to Java " +
                    "programming some examples to use the Java API " +
                    "(Application Programming Interface) to develop " +
                    "applications. Learning from some examples will " +
                    "hopefully decrease the time required to learn " +
                    "Java.";
            Paragraph paragraph = new Paragraph(text);
            paragraph.setAlignment(Element.ALIGN_JUSTIFIED);
            paragraph.setFont(new Font(
                    Font.FontFamily.HELVETICA, 10, Font.NORMAL));

            document.add(paragraph);
        } catch (DocumentException | FileNotFoundException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            document.close();
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<!-- https://search.maven.org/remotecontent?filepath=com/itextpdf/itextpdf/5.5.13.3/itextpdf-5.5.13.3.jar -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
    <artifactId>itextpdf</artifactId>
    <version>5.5.13.3</version>
</dependency>

Maven Central

Wayan

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.