PDFBOX Tutorial - Creating table in pdf Using PDFBOX

Creating table in pdf using PDFBOX is the hectic work ever. Because it don’t have any specific procedure to create table. It uses our hand drawing table model using scale.   If  I want to draw table in A4 size paper, first we have to know the width and height of A4 sheet and then draw lines based on x-axis y-axis mode. Starting x,y values and ending x,y values are required to draw line.

Below is the sample code for creating table in PDFBOX for A4size paper

A4 paper width is 595.27563  and height is 841.8898(in PDFBOX terminology)

In the below code first I created horizontal lines(row- changing y axis value) and then vertical lines(column- changing x axis value) . And also I attached output pdf table as image here

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.common.PDRectangle;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.edit.PDPageContentStream;

/**

 *

 * @author Bharathi Raja

 */

public class CreatePDFBOXTable {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        try {

            createTable();

        } catch (Exception e) {

            e.printStackTrace();

        }

    }

    public static void createTable() throws Exception {

        String path = "d:\\tablepdf.pdf";  //location to store the pdf file

        PDDocument document = new PDDocument();

        PDPage page = new PDPage(PDPage.PAGE_SIZE_A4);

        document.addPage(page);

        PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page);

        PDRectangle mediabox = page.findMediaBox();

        float margin = 50;

        float startX = mediabox.getLowerLeftX() + margin;

        float startY = mediabox.getUpperRightY() - margin;

        final int rows = 3;

        final float rowHeight = 20f;

      

        final float tableWidth = page.findMediaBox().getWidth() - (2 * margin);

       

        //draw the rows

        float nexty = 650;

        for (int i = 0; i <= rows; i++) {

            if (i == 0 || i == 1) {

                contentStream.drawLine(margin, nexty, margin + tableWidth, nexty);

            }

            nexty -= rowHeight;

        }

        contentStream.drawLine(margin, 300, margin + tableWidth, 300);

        int y = 650;

       

        //drawing columns the columns

        float nextx = 50;

       

        int h = 300;

        contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, h);

        nextx = 100;

        contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, h);

        nextx = 350;

        contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, h);

        nextx = 420;

        contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, h);

        nextx = 475;

        contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, h);

        nextx = 545;

        contentStream.drawLine(nextx, y, nextx, h);

    //now add the text

       

        contentStream.close();

        document.save(path);

        document.close();

        System.out.println("done");

    }

}