I am posting this question because many developers ask more or less the same question in different forms. I will answer this question myself (I am the Founder/CTO of iText Group), so that it can be a "Wiki-answer." If the Stack Overflow "documentation" feature still existed, this would have been a good candidate for a documentation topic.
The source file:
I am trying to convert the following HTML file to PDF:
<html>
<head>
<title>Colossal (movie)</title>
<style>
.poster { width: 120px;float: right; }
.director { font-style: italic; }
.description { font-family: serif; }
.imdb { font-size: 0.8em; }
a { color: red; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<img src="img/colossal.jpg" class="poster" />
<h1>Colossal (2016)</h1>
<div class="director">Directed by Nacho Vigalondo</div>
<div class="description">Gloria is an out-of-work party girl
forced to leave her life in New York City, and move back home.
When reports surface that a giant creature is destroying Seoul,
she gradually comes to the realization that she is somehow connected
to this phenomenon.
</div>
<div class="imdb">Read more about this movie on
IMDB
</div>
</body>
</html>
In a browser, this HTML looks like this:
The problems I encountered:
HTMLWorker doesn't take CSS into account at all
When I used HTMLWorker, I need to create an ImageProvider to avoid an error that informs me that the image can't be found. I also need to create a StyleSheet instance to change some of the styles:
public static class MyImageFactory implements ImageProvider {
public Image getImage(String src, Map<String, String> h,
ChainedProperties cprops, DocListener doc) {
try {
return Image.getInstance(
String.format("resources/html/img/%s",
src.substring(src.lastIndexOf("/") + 1)));
} catch (DocumentException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return null;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, DocumentException {
Document document = new Document();
PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream("results/htmlworker.pdf"));
document.open();
StyleSheet styles = new StyleSheet();
styles.loadStyle("imdb", "size", "-3");
HTMLWorker htmlWorker = new HTMLWorker(document, null, styles);
HashMap<String,Object> providers = new HashMap<String, Object>();
providers.put(HTMLWorker.IMG_PROVIDER, new MyImageFactory());
htmlWorker.setProviders(providers);
htmlWorker.parse(new FileReader("resources/html/sample.html"));
document.close();
}
The result looks like this:
For some reason, HTMLWorker also shows the content of the <title> tag. I don't know how to avoid this. The CSS in the header isn't parsed at all, I have to define all the styles in my code, using the StyleSheet object.
When I look at my code, I see that plenty of objects and methods I'm using are deprecated:
So I decided to upgrade to using XML Worker.
Images aren't found when using XML Worker
I tried the following code:
public static final String DEST = "results/xmlworker1.pdf";
public static final String HTML = "resources/html/sample.html";
public void createPdf(String file) throws IOException, DocumentException {
Document document = new Document();
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(file));
document.open();
XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().parseXHtml(writer, document,
new FileInputStream(HTML));
document.close();
}
This resulted in the following PDF:
Instead of Times-Roman, the default font Helvetica is used; this is typical for iText (I should have defined a font explicitly in my HTML). Otherwise, the CSS seems to be respected, but the image is missing, and I didn't get an error message.
With HTMLWorker, an exception was thrown, and I was able to fix the problem by introducing an ImageProvider. Let's see if this works for XML Worker.
Not all CSS styles are supported in XML Worker
I adapted my code like this:
public static final String DEST = "results/xmlworker2.pdf";
public static final String HTML = "resources/html/sample.html";
public static final String IMG_PATH = "resources/html/";
public void createPdf(String file) throws IOException, DocumentException {
Document document = new Document();
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(file));
document.open();
CSSResolver cssResolver =
XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().getDefaultCssResolver(true);
HtmlPipelineContext htmlContext = new HtmlPipelineContext(null);
htmlContext.setTagFactory(Tags.getHtmlTagProcessorFactory());
htmlContext.setImageProvider(new AbstractImageProvider() {
public String getImageRootPath() {
return IMG_PATH;
}
});
PdfWriterPipeline pdf = new PdfWriterPipeline(document, writer);
HtmlPipeline html = new HtmlPipeline(htmlContext, pdf);
CssResolverPipeline css = new CssResolverPipeline(cssResolver, html);
XMLWorker worker = new XMLWorker(css, true);
XMLParser p = new XMLParser(worker);
p.parse(new FileInputStream(HTML));
document.close();
}
My code is much longer, but now the image is rendered:
The image is larger than when I rendered it using HTMLWorker which tells me that the CSS attribute width for the poster class is taken into account, but the float attribute is ignored. How do I fix this?
The remaining question:
So the question boils down to this: I have a specific HTML file that I try to convert to PDF. I have gone through a lot of work, fixing one problem after the other, but there is one specific problem that I can't solve: how do I make iText respect CSS that defines the position of an element, such as float: right?
Additional question:
When my HTML contains form elements (such as <input>), those form elements are ignored.
Why your code doesn't work
As explained in the introduction of the HTML to PDF tutorial, HTMLWorker has been deprecated many years ago. It wasn't intended to convert complete HTML pages. It doesn't know that an HTML page has a <head> and a <body> section; it just parses all the content. It was meant to parse small HTML snippets, and you could define styles using the StyleSheet class; real CSS wasn't supported.
Then came XML Worker. XML Worker was meant as a generic framework to parse XML. As a proof of concept, we decided to write some XHTML to PDF functionality, but we didn't support all of the HTML tags. For instance: forms weren't supported at all, and it was very hard to support CSS that is used to position content. Forms in HTML are very different from forms in PDF. There was also a mismatch between the iText architecture and the architecture of HTML + CSS. Gradually, we extended XML Worker, mostly based on requests from customers, but XML Worker became a monster with many tentacles.
Eventually, we decided to rewrite iText from scratch, with the requirements for HTML + CSS conversion in mind. This resulted in iText 7. On top of iText 7, we created several add-ons, the most important one in this context being pdfHTML.
How to solve the problem
Using the latest version of iText (iText 7.1.0 + pdfHTML 2.0.0) the code to convert the HTML from the question to PDF is reduced to this snippet:
public static final String SRC = "src/main/resources/html/sample.html";
public static final String DEST = "target/results/sample.pdf";
public void createPdf(String src, String dest) throws IOException {
HtmlConverter.convertToPdf(new File(src), new File(dest));
}
The result looks like this:
As you can see, this is pretty much the result you'd expect. Since iText 7.1.0 / pdfHTML 2.0.0, the default font is Times-Roman. The CSS is being respected: the image is now floating on the right.
Some additional thoughts.
Developers often feel opposed to upgrade to a newer iText version when I give the advice to upgrade to iText 7 / pdfHTML 2. Allow me to answer to the top 3 of arguments I hear:
I need to use the free iText, and iText 7 isn't free / the pdfHTML add-on is closed source.
iText 7 is released using the AGPL, just like iText 5 and XML Worker. The AGPL allows free use in the sense of free of charge in the context of open source projects. If you are distributing a closed source / proprietary product (e.g. you use iText in a SaaS context), you can't use iText for free; in that case, you have to purchase a commercial license. This was already true for iText 5; this is still true for iText 7. As for versions prior to iText 5: you shouldn't use these at all. Regarding pdfHTML: the first versions were indeed only available as closed source software. We have had heavy discussion within iText Group: on the one hand, there were the people who wanted to avoid the massive abuse by companies who don't listen to their developers when those developers tell the powers that be that open source isn't the same as free. Developers were telling us that their boss forced them to do the wrong thing, and that they couldn't convince their boss to purchase a commercial license. On the other hand, there were the people who argued that we shouldn't punish developers for the wrong behavior of their bosses. Eventually, the people in favor of open sourcing pdfHTML, that is: the developers at iText, won the argument. Please prove that they weren't wrong, and use iText correctly: respect the AGPL if you're using iText for free; make sure that your boss purchases a commercial license if you're using iText in a closed source context.
I need to maintain a legacy system, and I have to use an old iText version.
Seriously? Maintenance also involves applying upgrades and migrating to new versions of the software you're using. As you can see, the code needed when using iText 7 and pdfHTML is very simple, and less error-prone than the code needed before. A migration project shouldn't take too long.
I've only just started and I didn't know about iText 7; I only found out after I finished my project.
That's why I'm posting this question and answer. Think of yourself as an eXtreme Programmer. Throw away all of your code, and start anew. You'll notice that it's not as much work as you imagined, and you'll sleep better knowing that you've made your project future-proof because iText 5 is being phased out. We still offer support to paying customers, but eventually, we'll stop supporting iText 5 altogether.
Use iText 7 and this code:
public void generatePDF(String htmlFile) {
try {
//HTML String
String htmlString = htmlFile;
//Setting destination
FileOutputStream fileOutputStream = new FileOutputStream(new File(dirPath + "/USER-16-PF-Report.pdf"));
PdfWriter pdfWriter = new PdfWriter(fileOutputStream);
ConverterProperties converterProperties = new ConverterProperties();
PdfDocument pdfDocument = new PdfDocument(pdfWriter);
//For setting the PAGE SIZE
pdfDocument.setDefaultPageSize(new PageSize(PageSize.A3));
Document document = HtmlConverter.convertToDocument(htmlFile, pdfDocument, converterProperties);
document.close();
}
catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Convert a static HTML page take also any CSS Style:
HtmlConverter.convertToPdf(new File("./pdf-input.html"),new File("demo-html.pdf"));
For spring Boot user: Convert a dynamic HTML page using SpringBoot and Thymeleaf:
#RequestMapping(path = "/pdf")
public ResponseEntity<?> getPDF(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException {
/* Do Business Logic*/
Order order = OrderHelper.getOrder();
/* Create HTML using Thymeleaf template Engine */
WebContext context = new WebContext(request, response, servletContext);
context.setVariable("orderEntry", order);
String orderHtml = templateEngine.process("order", context);
/* Setup Source and target I/O streams */
ByteArrayOutputStream target = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
ConverterProperties converterProperties = new ConverterProperties();
converterProperties.setBaseUri("http://localhost:8080");
/* Call convert method */
HtmlConverter.convertToPdf(orderHtml, target, converterProperties);
/* extract output as bytes */
byte[] bytes = target.toByteArray();
/* Send the response as downloadable PDF */
return ResponseEntity.ok()
.header(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_DISPOSITION, "attachment; filename=order.pdf")
.contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_PDF)
.body(bytes);
}
Related
In my project, some data sets are needed to be exported in PDF format.
I learned that iText is helpful, and PdfpTable can do the work, but it needs much code to deal with styles. While using PDF template can save time and code for adjusting style, but I can only set certain fields left in the template.
Can you give me some suggestions to show the data sets using commands like foreach? Thanks in advance!
Here are my code using pdfpTable, which has done the work, but the code is a little ugly:
PdfPTable pdfTable = createNewPDFTable();
for (int i = 0; i < dataSet.size(); i++) {
MetaObject metaObject = SystemMetaObject.forObject(dataSet.get(i));
for (String field : fields) {
Phrase phrase = new Phrase(String.valueOf(metaObject.getValue(field) != null ? metaObject.getValue(field) : "")
, PDFUtil.createChineseSong(DEFAULT_CELL_FONT_SIZE));
PdfPCell fieldCell = new PdfPCell(phrase);
fieldCell.setBorder(Rectangle.NO_BORDER);
fieldCell.setFixedHeight(DEFAULT_COLUMN_HEIGHT);
fieldCell.setHorizontalAlignment(Element.ALIGN_CENTER);
fieldCell.setVerticalAlignment(Element.ALIGN_MIDDLE);
pdfTable.addCell(fieldCell);
}
}
Here are some code using pdfp template,which is copied from itext examples, the work is unfinished yet because i haven't find a proper way to show the data set.
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(src);
PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, new FileOutputStream(dest));
AcroFields form = stamper.getAcroFields();
form.setField("text_1", "Bruno Lowagie");
form.setFieldProperty("text_1", "setfflags", PdfFormField.FF_READ_ONLY, null);
There is an inconsistency in your question. You write: PdfpTable can do the work, but it needs much code to deal with styles. However, in your first code snippet, you don't really create your PDFs the way one would expect. Instead of producing a high volume of finished PDFs, you create use PdfPTable to create a template. I assume you then use that template to create a high volume of finished PDFs.
If you want to use a template and populate it afterwards, you shouldn't create your form using iText. Create it manually, for instance using Open Office or Libre Office. See for instance the example in chapter 6 of my book (section 6.3.5). Create the template with a tool that has a GUI, then fill out that template many times using iText.
This approach has some down-sides: all the content has to fit the fields you define. All fields have a fixed position on a fixed page.
If "applying styles through code" is a problem, you may want to follow the approach described in the ZUGFeRD book. In that book, we create HTML first: Creating HTML invoices.
Once you have the HTML, then convert the HTML to PDF, and use CSS to apply styles: Creating PDF invoices.
This is how we create a ZUGFeRDDocument:
ZugferdDocument pdfDocument = new ZugferdDocument(
new PdfWriter(fos), ZugferdConformanceLevel.ZUGFeRDComfort,
new PdfOutputIntent("Custom", "", "http://www.color.org",
"sRGB IEC61966-2.1", new FileInputStream(INTENT)));
pdfDocument.addFileAttachment(
"ZUGFeRD invoice", dom.toXML(), "ZUGFeRD-invoice.xml",
PdfName.ApplicationXml, new PdfDictionary(), PdfName.Alternative);
pdfDocument.setTagged();
HtmlConverter.convertToPdf(
new ByteArrayInputStream(html), pdfDocument, getProperties());
The getProperties() method looks like this:
public ConverterProperties getProperties() {
if (properties == null) {
properties = new ConverterProperties()
.setBaseUri("resources/zugferd/");
}
return properties;
}
You can find other examples on how to use HTML to PDF here: pdfHTML add-on (read the introduction).
Note that you are using an old version of iText. The examples I shared are using iText 7. There's a huge difference between iText 5 and iText 7.
I am using iText in Java to convert a HTML to PDF.
I want a particular paragraph which has some words as Bold and some as Bold+Underlined to be passed as a string to the Java code and to be converted to PDF using the iText library.
I am unable to find a suitable method for this. How should I do this?
If you want to convert XHTML to PDF, you need iText + XML Worker.
You can find a number of examples here: http://itextpdf.com/sandbox/xmlworker
The most simple examples looks like this:
public void createPdf(String file) throws IOException, DocumentException {
// step 1
Document document = new Document();
// step 2
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(file));
// step 3
document.open();
// step 4
XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().parseXHtml(writer, document,
new FileInputStream(HTML));
// step 5
document.close();
}
Note that the HTML file is passed as a FileInputStream in this case. You want to pass a String. This means you'll have to do something like this:
XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().parseXHtml(writer, document,
new StringReader("<p>The <b>String</b> I want to render to PDF</p>"));
There are more complex examples in the Sandbox in case you need support for images, special fonts, and so on. For instance this example will convert XHTML to a series of iText objects instead of rendering them to a page rightaway.
I am willing to convert xhtml files into pdf/a format or pdf files to pdf/a format.. Can anyone please suggest which java library I can use..
Thank you
I will make my example more specific
I have a simple html file xyz.html
<html><body>
hello
<br>
<font style = "Helvetica">hello</font>
<br>
</body></html>
java code :
Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4);
FileOutputStream fout = new FileOutputStream(pdffile);
PdfWriter pdfWriter = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, fout);
pdfWriter.setPDFXConformance(PdfWriter.PDFA1B);
FileReader fr = new FileReader(xyz.html);
document.open();
HashMap<String, Object> Provider = new HashMap<String, Object>();
DefaultFontProvider def = new
Provider.put(HTMLWorker.FONT_PROVIDER, def);
HTMLWorker htmlWorker = new HTMLWorker(document);
htmlWorker.setProviders(Provider);
htmlWorker.parse(fr);
I get the error com.itextpdf.text.pdf.PdfXConformanceException: All the fonts must be embedded. This one isn't: Helvetica
try the flying soucer: http://code.google.com/p/flying-saucer/
Check for iText library which has support for both Java and .net
http://itextpdf.com/
Few examples in the below link :
http://itextpdf.com/book/examples.php
http://www.rgagnon.com/javadetails/java-html-to-pdf-using-itext.html
This is proprietory but Its really a smart enterprise library and has good customer support.
Consider Apache FOP project, it supports conversion of xml files to pdf files.
I work at Expected Behavior, and we've developed a SaaS application called DocRaptor that converts HTML to PDF using Prince XML as our rendering engine. DocRaptor uses HTTP POST requests to generate PDF files, and can be used with Java.
Here's a link to our Java example:
DocRaptor Java example
And a link to DocRaptor's home page:
DocRaptor
DocRaptor IS a subscription based service, but our free plan allows you to create up to 5 documents per month, and we don't embed watermarks or restrict the size of free documents.
I am doing some "pro bono" development for a food pantry near where I live. They are inundated with forms and paperwork, and I would like to develop a system that simply reads data from their MySQL server (which I set up for them on a previous project) and feeds data into PDF versions of all the forms they are required to fill out. This will help them out enormously and save them a lot of time, as well as get rid of a lot of human errors that are made when filling out these forms.
Not knowing anything about the internals of PDF files, I can foresee two avenues here:
Harder Way: It is possible to scan a paper document, turn it into a PDF, and then have software that "fills out" the PDF simply by saying "add text except blah to the following (x,y) coordinates..."; or
Easier Way: PDF specification already allows for the construct of "fields" that can be filled out; this way I just write code that says "add text excerpt blah to the field called *address_value*...", etc.
So my first question is: which of the two avenues am I facing? Does PDF have a concept of "fields" or do I need to "fill out" these documents by telling the PDF library the pixel coordinates of where to place data?
Second, I obviously need an open source (and Java) library to do this. iText seems to be a good start but I've heard it can be difficult to work with. Can anyone lend some ideas or general recommendations here? Thanks in advance!
You can easily merge data into PDF's fields using the FDF(Form Data Format) technology.
Adobe provides a library to do that : Acrobat Forms Data Format (FDF) Toolkit
Also Apache PDFBox can be used to do that.
Please take a look at the chapter about interactive forms in the free ebook The Best iText Questions on StackOverflow. It bundles the answers to questions such as:
How to fill out a pdf file programatically?
How can I flatten a XFA PDF Form using iTextSharp?
Checking off pdf checkbox with itextsharp
How to continue field output on a second page?
finding out required fields to fill in pdf file
and so on...
Or you can watch this video where I explain how to use forms for reporting step by step.
See for instance:
public void manipulatePdf(String src, String dest) throws DocumentException, IOException {
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(src);
PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader,
new FileOutputStream(dest));
AcroFields fields = stamper.getAcroFields();
fields.setField("name", "CALIFORNIA");
fields.setField("abbr", "CA");
fields.setField("capital", "Sacramento");
fields.setField("city", "Los Angeles");
fields.setField("population", "36,961,664");
fields.setField("surface", "163,707");
fields.setField("timezone1", "PT (UTC-8)");
fields.setField("timezone2", "-");
fields.setField("dst", "YES");
stamper.setFormFlattening(true);
stamper.close();
reader.close();
}
public void fillPDF()
{
try {
PDDocument pDDocument = PDDocument.load(new File("D:/pdf/pdfform.pdf")); // pdfform.pdf is input file
PDAcroForm pDAcroForm = pDDocument.getDocumentCatalog().getAcroForm();
PDField field = pDAcroForm.getField("Given Name Text Box");
field.setValue("firstname");
field = pDAcroForm.getField("Family Name Text Box");
field.setValue("lastname");
field = pDAcroForm.getField("Country Combo Box");
field.setValue("Country");
System.out.println("country combo" );
field = pDAcroForm.getField(" Driving License Check Box");
field = pDAcroForm.getField("Favourite Colour List Box");
System.out.println("country combo"+ field.isRequired());
pDDocument.save("D:/pdf/pdf-java-output.pdf");
pDDocument.close();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
I am using iText 2.1.7 to generate a document from a database. One of the fields I need to add is in XHTML format. I can use the HTMLWorker class to generate the HTML but this is a bit limited.
I convert this to XHTML using the following code:
String url = chapterDesc.getString("description").toString(); // get the HTML string from the database
org.w3c.dom.Document doc = XMLResource.load(new ByteArrayInputStream(url.getBytes())).getDocument();
ITextRenderer renderer = new ITextRenderer();
renderer.setDocument(doc, null);
ByteArrayOutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
renderer.layout();
renderer.createPDF(os);
I want to add this information to the document in memory. Is this possible?
Do I need to use PdfStamper? I believe that this requires the document to be closed? If it is possible I would like to avoid using multiple passes to add these descriptions.
Flying saucer does not work correctly with any version of iText other than 2.0.8. Also since you meantioned creating the pdf in memory are you using JSF, JSP, or servlets? If you are than you can just send your ByteArrayOutputStream as a response on one of these pages using something along the lines of
response.setContentType("application/pdf");
response.setContentLength(os.size());
os.writeTo(response.getOutputStream());
response.flushBuffer();
I know it's been more than two years since you've asked, but I'm facing the same problem. I googled for a solution and apparently there is none anywhere to be found. So I had to develop my own and I thought I might as well share it. Hope it'll be useful to someone.
I tried to use flying saucer as you did, but it didn't work for me. My piece of HTML was just a simple table so I could use iText HTMLWorker to do the parsing.
So first I get a PdfStamper as you suggested.
PdfReader template = new PdfReader(templateFileName);
PdfStamper editablePage = new PdfStamper(template, reportOutStream);
Then I work with the document (fill the fields, insert some images) and after that I need to insert an HTML snippet.
//getting a 'canvas' to add parsed elements
final ColumnText page = new ColumnText(editablePage.getOverContent(pageNumber));
//finding out the page sizefinal
Rectangle pagesize = editablePage.getReader().getPageSize(pageNumber);
//you can define any size here, that will be where your parsed elements will be added
page.setSimpleColumn(0, 0, pagesize.getWidth(), pagesize.getHeight());
If you need simple styling, HTMLWorker can do some
StyleSheet styles = new StyleSheet();
styles.loadStyle("h1", "color", "#008080");
//parsing
List<Element> parsedTags = HTMLWorker.parseToList(new StringReader(htmlSnippet), styles);
for (Element tag : parsedTags)
{
page.addElement(tag);
page.go();
}
These are just some basic ideas of how to do that, hope it helps.