Show PDF file inside web browser with iText

Question

I developed a report (without and independent of any db datasource) only with iText. I know that with JasperReports this is easy. But in my case I just storage the report in pdf file or I used acrobat for java beans to show the report to user. Now I need to change my implementation code to show this report in web browser instead to save in the file.

How I can do this?

Answer 1

You need 2 thinks, first the browser plugin installed on the browser and second to set the content disposition header as inline in the respose, otherwise the browser will try to download it.

response.setHeader("Content-Disposition","inline; filename=\"file.pdf\""); 

I assume that you've already set the Content Type to application/pdf and know how to convert an iText document to a bytearray and transmit it to the user.

A word of caution: if people outside your organization will use this app, the might not have the pdf plugin installed, in which case, the browse will download the pdf instead of displaying the pdf.

Answer 2

if the browser has the appropriate add-on installed, you can just drag and drop a pdf-file into the browser and it will show it.

Or if you have a site on which you want to present the pdf, you just put a link to it:

<a href="your.pdf">link to your pdf</a>

Or did you mean you want to generate html-output for your report instead of pdf?