Adding page footer to pdf using itext

Question

I am able to use java and itext to create a pdf file with a page header and with body content. You can view the resulting file at a file sharing site by clicking on this link.

How can I alter the code below so that a page footer is also created at the bottom of the page? I want the footer to say "MyCity, MyState, MyPostalCode MyPhoneNumber". I also want to footer to have a line above it just like the header has a line above it in the example link above.

Here is the code that generates the sample PDF in the link above:

public class HeaderFooter {

    public static final String RESULT = "C:\\path\\to\\headerfooter.pdf";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws SQLException, DocumentException, IOException {

        Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4, 36, 36, 54, 36);
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        PdfWriter.getInstance(document, baos);
        document.open();
        document.add(new Paragraph(""));
        document.add(Chunk.NEWLINE);
        document.add(new Paragraph("First paragraph."));
        document.add(new Paragraph("Second paragraph."));
        document.add(new Paragraph("Third paragraph."));
        document.newPage();
        document.close();

        PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(baos.toByteArray());
        PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, new FileOutputStream(RESULT));
        int n = reader.getNumberOfPages();
        for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
            getHeader(i, n).writeSelectedRows(0, -1, 34, 803, stamper.getOverContent(i));
        }
        stamper.close();
        reader.close();
    }

    public static PdfPTable getHeader(int x, int y) {
        PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(2);
        table.setTotalWidth(527);
        table.setLockedWidth(true);
        table.getDefaultCell().setFixedHeight(20);
        table.getDefaultCell().setBorder(Rectangle.BOTTOM);
        table.addCell("This is the Document's Title.");
        table.getDefaultCell().setHorizontalAlignment(Element.ALIGN_RIGHT);
        return table;
    }
}

For anyone who wants to take one minute to get the above code to work on their computer, the maven dependency to add to pom.xml is:

  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
    <artifactId>itextpdf</artifactId>
    <version>5.5.5</version>
  </dependency>

Answer 1

You have copy/pasted code from the TwoPasses example that I wrote for my book. Note that you should not copy/paste code written by someone else without some kind of attribution (such as a link to where you found the code). This is something I learned when I did the code review of iText (see the slides "Startup Legal and IP" I presented for the Founder Institute).

Also: when you copy/paste code that was written in the context of a book, please make sure that you act like a real developer and read what the code you are copy/pasting is supposed to do. For instance: in the book you took as inspiration, there is also the PdfCalendar example.

In this example, we also create a table that we add at an absolute position using the writeSelectedRows() method. Just like you, we defined a width using the setTotalWidth() method, which means that we can ask the table for its height using the getTotalHeight() method.

In the PdfCalendar example, we use this value as a parameter for the writeSelectedRows() method:

table.writeSelectedRows(0, -1, 169, table.getTotalHeight() + 20, canvas);

In this case, the x value is 169, a value that was obtained by taking the width of the page (A4 in landscape = 842) minus the width of the table (which we defined as 504), divided by two: 338 / 2 = 169.

As for y, we took the height of the table (which can vary depending on the number of days in the month) and we add 20 user units as a bottom margin.

You have chosen 34 as value for x, which is OK, but 806 for y, which is strange if you want the table to be a footer: 806 is usually at the top of the page (especially since you defined your page size as PageSize.A4).

If you are creating a document from scratch and you want to add a header and a footer, you may want to do this in one pass and add the footer using a page event.