Creating a PDF Document in Java Application

In this article, I’ll show you how to create a simple PDF document from scratch using Java and a free PDF library - Free Spire.PDF for Java. The PDF to be generated contains a heading, a subheading and a main body which is read from a TXT file. The font styles of these three parts are abviously different, and the headings are centrally aligned while the parahraphs of body are left aligned.

Below is a screenshot of the TXT file.

Installing Spire.Pdf.jar

If you create a Maven project, you can easily import the jar in your application using the following configurations. For non-Maven projects, download the jar file from this link and add it as a dependency in your application. 

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>com.e-iceblue</id>
        <name>e-iceblue</name>
        <url>http://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId> e-iceblue </groupId>
        <artifactId>spire.pdf.free</artifactId>
        <version>2.6.3</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Using the code

import com.spire.pdf.graphics.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.geom.Point2D;
import java.awt.geom.Rectangle2D;
import java.io.*;

public class CreatePdfDocument {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException  {

        //Create a PdfDocument object
        PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();

        //Add a page
        PdfPageBase page = doc.getPages().add();

        //Heading and subheading
        String heading = "The Saucy Boy";
        String subheading = "by\r\nHan Christian Andersen\r\n(1835)";

        //Create a red brush and a black brush
        PdfSolidBrush brushBlue = new PdfSolidBrush(new PdfRGBColor(Color.red));
        PdfSolidBrush brushBlack = new PdfSolidBrush(new PdfRGBColor(Color.BLACK));

        //Create three true type fonts with different style and size
        PdfTrueTypeFont headingFont= new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Times New Roman",Font.BOLD,20));
        PdfTrueTypeFont subheadingFont= new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Times New Roman",Font.BOLD,14));
        PdfTrueTypeFont paraFont= new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Times New Roman",Font.PLAIN,13),true);

        //Set the text alignment to center via PdfStringFormat object
        PdfStringFormat format1 = new PdfStringFormat();
        format1.setAlignment(PdfTextAlignment.Center);

        //Draw heading and subheading on the center of the page
        page.getCanvas().drawString(heading, headingFont, brushBlue, new Point2D.Float((float)page.getClientSize().getWidth()/2, 0),format1);
        page.getCanvas().drawString(subheading, subheadingFont, brushBlack, new Point2D.Float((float)page.getClientSize().getWidth()/2, 30),format1);

        //Get body text from a txt file
        String body = readFileToString("C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Desktop\\body.txt");

        //Create a PdfTextWidget object
        PdfTextWidget widget = new PdfTextWidget(body, paraFont, brushBlack);

        //Create a rectangle where the body text will be drawn
        Rectangle2D.Float rect = new Rectangle2D.Float(0, 100, (float)page.getClientSize().getWidth(),(float)page.getClientSize().getHeight());

        //Set the PdfLayoutType to Paginate so that the content paginate automatically
        PdfTextLayout layout = new PdfTextLayout();
        layout.setLayout(PdfLayoutType.Paginate);

        //Draw body text on the page
        widget.draw(page, rect, layout);

        //Save the document
        doc.saveToFile("output/CreatePdf.pdf");
    }

    //Read txt file to String
    private static String readFileToString(String filepath) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String s ="";
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filepath));

        while( (s = br.readLine()) != null) {
            sb.append(s + "\n");
        }
        br.close();
        String str = sb.toString();
        return str;
    }
}

Output-1

Output-2