Apache PDFBox Tutorial
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Hello PDF World!

To begin with, let’s create a Simple PDF with a single page that displays Hello World.

Create a maven project and add the following block to dependencies section.


<dependency>
	<groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
	<artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
	<version>2.0.3</version>
</dependency>

Now under src\main\java create the package you desire, followed by a class named as HelloPDFWorld.java. Refer below code snippet.


public class HelloPDFWorld {

	/**
	 * @param args
	 */
	public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
	}

}

Once you are done with creating skeleton for the class. Add following block of code to main method. Note that you should change the file path mentioned in


PDDocument helloPdf = new PDDocument();
PDPage page = new PDPage(PDRectangle.A4);
helloPdf.addPage(page);

PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(helloPdf, page);
contentStream.beginText();
contentStream.setFont(PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD, 10);
contentStream.newLineAtOffset(10, 100);
contentStream.showText("Hello PDF World!!!");
contentStream.endText();
contentStream.close();

helloPdf.save(new File("D:\\temp\\simple.pdf"));
helloPdf.close();

Ensure there are no compilation error and run the main method. You should now have a PDF created at the location specified while calling save method.

Lets just walkthrough the code, we have written. To create new PDF document, PDFBox provides a class – org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument. You will find convenient methods like Saving PDF, adding signatures, adding new pages etc. To create new document, just initialize it with empty constructor.


PDDocument helloPdf = new PDDocument();

To add contents (text, image, form) in PDF, its necessary to create a page. Additionally the page size must also be indicated using the static constants available inside org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.common.PDRectangle


PDPage page = new PDPage(PDRectangle.A4);
helloPdf.addPage(page);

org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream provides API to add text, images etc. to the PDF page. Pass the PDDocument and PDPage reference to the constructor of PDPageContentStream to get the instance. If you are using editor with AutoCompletion feature, just type contentStream. and you should see several methods. To start adding text, it is necessary to call beginText method on stream object. Also setting a font is mandatory. PDFBox also provides option to embed custom fonts to style the text as per the requirements. For the time being, lets just stick to built-in font.


PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(helloPdf, page);
contentStream.beginText();
contentStream.setFont(PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD, 10);
contentStream.newLineAtOffset(10, 100);
contentStream.showText("Hello PDF World!!!");
contentStream.endText();
contentStream.close();

It is also necessary to specify the offset before adding text or by default text will be added at the bottom of the page. Offset can be specified using newLineAtOffset method, with two arguments - X and Y respectively. Note that Y offset is relative to the bottom portion of the page. Try changing the values and re-run the code to see the impact. To add text at the specified offset, invoke showText method and pass String argument. Invoke endText method to indicate, text addition is complete. Finally, call close method on stream.

Finally, to save the document invoke save method on PDDocument, followed by close.


helloPdf.save(new File("D:\\temp\\simple.pdf"));
helloPdf.close();
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