Apache PDFBox Java library - Is there an API for creating tables?

Question

I am using the Apache PDFBox java library to create PDFs. Is there a way to create a data-table using pdfbox? If there is no such API to do it, I would require to manually draw the table using drawLine etc., Any suggestions on how to go about this?

Answer 1

Source: Creating tables with PDFBox

The following method draws a table with the specified table content. Its a bit of a hack and will work for small strings of text. It does not perform word wrapping, but you can get an idea of how it is done. Give it a go!

/**  * @param page  * @param contentStream  * @param y the y-coordinate of the first row  * @param margin the padding on left and right of table  * @param content a 2d array containing the table data  * @throws IOException  */ public static void drawTable(PDPage page, PDPageContentStream contentStream,                              float y, float margin,                              String[][] content) throws IOException {     final int rows = content.length;     final int cols = content[0].length;     final float rowHeight = 20f;     final float tableWidth = page.findMediaBox().getWidth() - margin - margin;     final float tableHeight = rowHeight * rows;     final float colWidth = tableWidth/(float)cols;     final float cellMargin=5f;      //draw the rows     float nexty = y ;     for (int i = 0; i <= rows; i++) {         contentStream.drawLine(margin, nexty, margin+tableWidth, nexty);         nexty-= rowHeight;     }      //draw the columns     float nextx = margin;     for (int i = 0; i <= cols; i++) {         contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, y-tableHeight);         nextx += colWidth;     }      //now add the text             contentStream.setFont( PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD , 12 );              float textx = margin+cellMargin;     float texty = y-15;             for(int i = 0; i < content.length; i++){         for(int j = 0 ; j < content[i].length; j++){             String text = content[i][j];             contentStream.beginText();             contentStream.moveTextPositionByAmount(textx,texty);             contentStream.drawString(text);             contentStream.endText();             textx += colWidth;         }         texty-=rowHeight;         textx = margin+cellMargin;     } } 

Usage:

PDDocument doc = new PDDocument(); PDPage page = new PDPage(); doc.addPage( page );  PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page);  String[][] content = {{"a","b", "1"},                        {"c","d", "2"},                        {"e","f", "3"},                        {"g","h", "4"},                        {"i","j", "5"}} ;  drawTable(page, contentStream, 700, 100, content); contentStream.close(); doc.save("test.pdf" );