I am having formatting issues with PDF Box. My goal is to print a PDF in table style format as a report. The content format will be similar to
Name Code Description Value
I retrieve my DB result set and have a List of Java objects. I extract the required information and I format them as as a list of strings as below. I cycle thru the objects, construct a string and add to an arrayList. The idea being I create a list of Strings of the exact same length/style to enforce formatting in pdf.
for(MyObject obj: dbresults){
//format as below and add to list
}
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
Formatter formatter = new Formatter(sb);
formatter.format("%-25.25s", "This is some text with more than 25 characters.");
formatter.format("%-25.25s", "Some text with less.");
formatter.format("%-25.25s", "Some other text.");
System.out.println(formatter.toString());
Output:
|This is some text with mo|Some text with less. |Some other text. |
I print out this list multiple times to screen :) and via System.out or logger the format is exactly as I expect, even blocks.
However when I send to PDFBox to print to file the format gets 'corrupted' and the 'table format' is not honoured. I pass in 100 and 700 as x,y co-ords.
private void printMultipleLines(
PDPageContentStream contentStream,
List<String> lines,
float x,
float y) throws IOException {
if (lines.size() == 0) {
return;
}
final int numberOfLines = lines.size();
final float fontHeight = getFontHeight();
contentStream.beginText();
contentStream.appendRawCommands(fontHeight + " TL\n");
contentStream.moveTextPositionByAmount( x, y);
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfLines; i++) {
contentStream.drawString(lines.get(i));
if (i < numberOfLines - 1) {
contentStream.appendRawCommands("T*\n");
}
}
contentStream.endText();
}
To get the height of the font you can use this command:
fontHeight = font.getFontDescriptor().getFontBoundingBox().getHeight() / 1000 * fontSize;
Sample List for printing: This is how it looks after using java formatter class when printing to screen, All looks good, but when i print to PDFBox the format is not honoured
Tom Thumb 555-ddd Good 23
Tom Thumb 666-ggg Good 45
CHARLES DICKENS 777-jjj Good 32
CHARLES DICKENS 666-hhh Bad 11
W Yeats 888-hhh Ok 12
R Whitely 444-999 Terrible 44
PDF output looks like
Tom Thumb 555-ddd Good 23
Tom Thumb 666-ggg Good 45
CHARLES DICKENS 777-jjj Good 32
CHARLES DICKENS 666-hhh Bad 11
W Yeats 888-hhh Ok 12
R Whitely 444-999 Terrible 44
Any help much appreciated!
