How to set an outline border for pdf table ItextPdf Java

Question

how to set outline border for pdf table using itext pdf java

 ________________________________________
|  cell 1    cell2   cell3    cell4      |                                        
|  cell 5    cell2   cell3    cell4      |                                        
|  cell 9    cell2   cell3    cell4      |                                        
|  cell 1    cell2   cell3    cell4      |                                        
|  cell 1    cell2   cell3    cell4      |                                        
|________________________________________|

Answer 1

In iText 7, see Chapter 5 of the "iText 7: building blocks" tutorial, where we create this table:

The code can be found here: CellBorders

Table table2 = new Table(new float[]{2, 1, 1});
table2.setMarginTop(10);
table2.setBorder(new SolidBorder(1));
table2.setWidthPercent(80);
table2.setHorizontalAlignment(HorizontalAlignment.CENTER);
table2.addCell(new Cell(1, 3)
    .add("Cell with colspan 3").setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER));
table2.addCell(new Cell(2, 1)
    .add("Cell with rowspan 2").setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER));
table2.addCell(new Cell()
    .add("row 1; cell 1").setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER));
table2.addCell(new Cell()
    .add("row 1; cell 2").setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER));
table2.addCell(new Cell()
    .add("row 2; cell 1").setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER));
table2.addCell(new Cell()
    .add("row 2; cell 2").setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER));
document.add(table2);

In iText 5, you have to set all the borders of all the cell to NO_BORDER, and you have to draw the border of a table by using a table event. This is explained in chapter 5 of the book "iText in Action - Second Edition", more specifically in the PressPreviews example.

This is the table event you need:

public class MyTableEvent implements PdfPTableEvent {
    public void tableLayout(PdfPTable table, float[][] width, float[] height,
            int headerRows, int rowStart, PdfContentByte[] canvas) {
        float widths[] = width[0];
        float x1 = widths[0];
        float x2 = widths[widths.length - 1];
        float y1 = height[0];
        float y2 = height[height.length - 1];
        PdfContentByte cb = canvas[PdfPTable.LINECANVAS];
        cb.rectangle(x1, y1, x2 - x1, y2 - y1);
        cb.stroke();
        cb.resetRGBColorStroke();
    }
}

You declare this event to the table like this:

table.setTableEvent(new MyTableEvent());

make sure that the cell don't have any borders!

Important: if you are starting a new project with iText, you should consider using iText 7. As you can see, there were quite some changes to the API.