Christoph Bartneck, Ph.D.

After the installation of your Java editor, JSDK’s and setting the right class path to the iText.jar file you can start with your code in Java to create a PDF file.

First Class

Just start your class as learned in the Java assignments:

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
public class Testcase {
public static void main(String[] args) {
// code goes here
}
}

Add iText libaries

Now you need to import the iText libraries:

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.lowagie.text.*;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
public class Testcase {
public static void main(String[] args) {
// code goes here
}
}

Creating a document

Next, you can add a new document:

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.lowagie.text.*;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
public class Testcase {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(“Printing PDF file ..”);
Rectangle pageSize = new Rectangle(0,0,2382,3369);
Document document = new Document(pageSize);
}
}

The System.out.println is a check to see if the creation of the PDF file is actually called after running your application.

Document setup

pageSize is a new rectangle instance which is going to contain some properties for the document instance about for example: size and color. The com.lowagie.text.Document object has 3 constructors:

public Document();
public Document(Rectangle pageSize);
public Document(Rectangle pageSize, int marginLeft, int marginRight, int marginTop, int marginBottom);

The first constructor calls the second one, with PageSize.A4 as parameter. The second constructor calls the third one, with 36 as value for each margin. So also possible is for example:

Document document = new Document(PageSize.A0);

PageSize.A0 automatically assigns the right values for a A0 size to the document instance. Further options are: A0-A10, LEGAL, LETTER, HALFLETTER, _11x17, LEDGER, NOTE, B0-B5, ARCH_A-ARCH_E, FLSA and FLSE.

Once our document is created, we can create one or more instances of writers that listen to this document. All writers should be derived from the abstract class com.lowagie.text.DocWriter. For the moment there are two possibilities: you can use com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter to generate documents in the Portable Document Format, or you can use com.lowagie.text.html.HtmlWriter to generate documents in HTML. If for instance you want to generate TeX-documents as well, you could write a package: m.lowagie.text.TeX.TeXWriter.

You can create an instance this way:

dfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(“filename.pdf”));

So including the exceptions you’ll get:

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.lowagie.text.*;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
public class Testcase {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println(“Printing PDF file ..”);
Rectangle pageSize = new Rectangle(0,0,2382,3369);
Document document = new Document(pageSize);
try { PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(“filename.pdf”));}
catch(DocumentException de) {
System.err.println(de.getMessage());
}
catch(IOException ioe) {
System.err.println(ioe.getMessage());
}
}
}

Visuals

Now it’s time to get some visuals into the PDF file. What you’ll have to is open the document, add graphics and then close the document. In this example we add a line to the document that says: “Hi, this is your PDF file!”

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import com.lowagie.text.*;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;
public class Testcase {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Printing PDF file ..");
Rectangle pageSize = new Rectangle(0,0,2382,3369);
Document document = new Document(pageSize);
try {
PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream("filename.pdf"));
document.open();
document.add(new Paragraph("Hi, this is your PDF file!"));
}
catch(DocumentException de) {
System.err.println(de.getMessage());
}
catch(IOException ioe) {
System.err.println(ioe.getMessage());
}
document.close();
}
}

Compile

Just compile and run this piece of code and you PDF file is created. If you open the PDF file the text is quite small, that’s because it’s on A0 format.

For more complex possibilities and features read the tutorials on:

• http://www.lowagie.com/iText/tutorial
• http://itext.sourceforge.net/docs/