Java - PDF Generation Framework

Question

I am using PDF documents for various purposes using iText library. Its like one class per PDF document. In a way there are a lot of similarities among the classes and the same have been listed below:

1. The fields have (x,y) location
2. The field can be wrapped after some no. of words
3. A field can have a value which is a function of one or more parameters
4. Subsequent page of PDF has to kept same or different

I am thinking of doing this layout business through a XML file. Any thoughts or innovative ideas of solving this are welcome.

Answer 1

take a look at PDFBox Library which is now in the incubator of Apache

Answer 2

PDFBox is nice, Used it before and good good help from the developer. You might want to have a look at XSL:FO. It is an XML based formatting language that can output the result as PDF (and other formats) using Apache:FOP.

Answer 3

What about Prince? It's a FOP engine that uses CSS files as styling, and has a Java API. It's not free though (apart from the free Personal License)

Answer 4

Flying Saucer supports using XHTML/CSS to create PDFs.