Thread: Creating a pdf without 3rd library

a) get to know the PDF file spec very intimately and/or b) use the source code of an open source project (eg PDFBox) as a guide.

Originally Posted by Pischti

Hi,
I want create a simple pdf-document (a headline and a paragraph), but without a 3rd library like iText or other.
It can also be patched together text-based.

Does anyone have a tip or code-snippet?

Thanks in advance.

Creating a PDF document without any library is almost impossible. I suggest that you try Free Spire.PDF for Java. The following code snippet shows you how to create a simple PDF document containing a headline and several paragraphs. The paragrahs are read from a .txt file.

import com.spire.pdf.graphics.*;
 
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.geom.Point2D;
import java.awt.geom.Rectangle2D;
import java.io.*;
 
public class CreatePdfDocument {
 
    public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException  {
 
        //create a PdfDocument object
        PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();
 
        //add a page
        PdfPageBase page = doc.getPages().add();
 
        //heading text
        String heading = "Java - Overview";
 
        //create solid brush objects
        PdfSolidBrush brush1 = new PdfSolidBrush(new PdfRGBColor(Color.BLUE));
        PdfSolidBrush brush2 = new PdfSolidBrush(new PdfRGBColor(Color.BLACK));
 
        //create true type font objects
        PdfTrueTypeFont font1= new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Times New Roman",Font.PLAIN,20));
        PdfTrueTypeFont font2= new PdfTrueTypeFont(new Font("Arial Unicode MS",Font.PLAIN,12));
 
        //set the text alignment via PdfStringFormat class
        PdfStringFormat format1 = new PdfStringFormat();
        format1.setAlignment(PdfTextAlignment.Center);
 
        //draw heading on the center of the page
        page.getCanvas().drawString(heading, font1, brush1, new Point2D.Float((float)page.getActualBounds(true).getWidth()/2, 0),format1);
 
        //get body text from a .txt file
        String body = readFileToString("C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Desktop\\body.txt");
 
        //create a PdfTextWidget object
        PdfTextWidget widget = new PdfTextWidget(body, font2, brush2);
 
        //create a rectangle where the body text will be placed
        Rectangle2D.Float rect = new Rectangle2D.Float(0, 30, (float)page.getActualBounds(true).getWidth(),(float)page.getActualBounds(true).getHeight());
 
        //set the PdfLayoutType to Paginate to make the content paginated automatically
        PdfTextLayout layout = new PdfTextLayout();
        layout.setLayout(PdfLayoutType.Paginate);
 
        //draw body text on the page
        widget.draw(page, rect, layout);
 
        //save to file
        doc.saveToFile("output/CreatePdf.pdf");
    }
 
    //customize a function to read TXT file to String
    private static String readFileToString(String filepath) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException {
 
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        String s ="";
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(filepath));
 
        while( (s = br.readLine()) != null) {
            sb.append(s + "\n");
        }
        br.close();
        String str = sb.toString();
        return str;
    }
}