Spring MVC - PDF View

This example demonstrates how to create a PDF document and use it as the view technology in a Spring MVC application. We are going to use iText library for creating the document programmatically.

Example

Additional Maven Dependency

pom.xml

<dependency>
   <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
   <artifactId>itext7-core</artifactId>
   <version>7.0.4</version>
</dependency>

Java Config class

In this example, we are going to use BeanNameViewResolver for resolving PDF view. That means we need to register an implementation of View as a bean. We will return the bean name as a view name from the Spring controller. Check out this simple example of BeanNameViewResolver as well.

@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
@ComponentScan
public class MyWebConfig {
    @Bean
    public ViewResolver beanNameViewResolver() {
        BeanNameViewResolver resolver = new BeanNameViewResolver();
        return resolver;
    }

    @Bean
    public ViewResolver jspViewResolver() {
        InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
        viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/views/");
        viewResolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
        return viewResolver;
    }
}

Implementing the View

Spring provides a support class AbstractPdfView but that is based on old deprecated iText API. We are going extend AbstractView and use iText API directly.

package com.logicbig.example;

import com.itextpdf.io.font.FontConstants;
import com.itextpdf.kernel.font.PdfFontFactory;
import com.itextpdf.kernel.pdf.PdfDocument;
import com.itextpdf.kernel.pdf.PdfWriter;
import com.itextpdf.layout.Document;
import com.itextpdf.layout.element.Paragraph;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.AbstractView;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.time.format.FormatStyle;
import java.util.Map;

@Component("reportView")
public class ReportPdfView extends AbstractView {

    @Override
    protected void renderMergedOutputModel(Map<String, Object> model,
                                           HttpServletRequest request,
                                           HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
        response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=myReport.pdf");
        Report report = (Report) model.get("report");

        //IText API
        PdfWriter pdfWriter = new PdfWriter(response.getOutputStream());
        PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument(pdfWriter);
        Document pdfDocument = new Document(pdf);

        //title
        Paragraph title = new Paragraph(report.getName());
        title.setFont(PdfFontFactory.createFont(FontConstants.HELVETICA));
        title.setFontSize(18f);
        title.setItalic();
        pdfDocument.add(title);

        //date
        Paragraph date = new Paragraph(report.getDate().format(
                DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate(FormatStyle.FULL)));
        date.setFontSize(16f);
        pdfDocument.add(date);

        //content
        Paragraph content = new Paragraph(report.getContent());
        pdfDocument.add(content);

        pdfDocument.close();
    }
}

public class Report {
    private String name;
    private String content;
    private LocalDateTime date;
    .............
}

Writing a Spring Controller

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class MyController {

    @GetMapping("/")
    public String mainView() {
        return "main";
    }

    @GetMapping("/report")
    public String handleForexRequest(Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("report", getReport());
        return "reportView";
    }

    public Report getReport() {
        //dummy report
        Report report = new Report();
        report.setName("My Report");
        report.setContent("Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. "
                + "Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa.");
        report.setDate(LocalDateTime.now());
        return report;
    }
}

src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/main.jsp

<html>
<body>
<h2>Spring Pdf View Example</h2>
<a href="/report">Get the Report</a>

</body>
</html>

Output

clicking on the link:

Example Project

Dependencies and Technologies Used:

• spring-webmvc 4.3.11.RELEASE: Spring Web MVC.
• javax.servlet-api 3.1.0 Java Servlet API
• itext7-core 7.0.4: A Free Java-PDF library.
• JDK 1.8
• Maven 3.3.9