Generating PDF Reports in Java with iText and Apache PDFBox

Generating PDF Reports in Java: Overview of iText and Apache PDFBox Libraries

Creating PDF documents is one of the common tasks in enterprise Java applications. Reports, invoices, waybills, certificates — all of these are convenient to generate programmatically. In the Java ecosystem, there are two main libraries for working with PDF: iText (an industry standard, but with a commercial license for new versions) and Apache PDFBox (completely free and open-source). In this article, we will cover both, show code examples, and help you choose the right tool for your project.

1. Apache PDFBox — a free alternative with extensive capabilities

Apache PDFBox is an open-source library (Apache 2.0 license). It allows you to create PDFs from scratch, edit existing ones, and extract text and metadata. PDFBox does not require a commercial license, making it an ideal choice for startups and open-source projects.

Key features:

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• Creating documents with text, images, and tables.
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• Working with fonts (including Cyrillic).
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• Adding bookmarks, hyperlinks, and watermarks.
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• Encryption and password protection.
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• Extracting text and images from existing PDFs.
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Example: creating a simple PDF report with a table

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;\nimport org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;\nimport org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;\nimport org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType0Font;\nimport org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.common.PDRectangle;\nimport java.io.File;\nimport java.io.IOException;\n\npublic class PdfBoxReport {\n    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {\n        try (PDDocument document = new PDDocument()) {\n            PDPage page = new PDPage(PDRectangle.A4);\n            document.addPage(page);\n\n            // Load a font with Cyrillic support\n            PDType0Font font = PDType0Font.load(document, new File("fonts/arial.ttf"));\n\n            try (PDPageContentStream cs = new PDPageContentStream(document, page)) {\n                // Title\n                cs.beginText();\n                cs.setFont(font, 18);\n                cs.newLineAtOffset(50, 750);\n                cs.showText("Sales Report for Q1 2025");\n                cs.endText();\n\n                // Table (simple implementation via lines and text)\n                cs.setFont(font, 12);\n                // Draw column headers\n                float margin = 50;\n                float yStart = 700;\n                float tableWidth = 500;\n                float rowHeight = 25;\n                String[] headers = {"Product", "Quantity", "Price, RUB"};\n                String[][] data = {{"Laptop", "10", "85000"}, {"Mouse", "50", "1500"}, {"Keyboard", "30", "3500"}};\n\n                // Table header\n                cs.setLineWidth(1f);\n                for (int i = 0; i < headers.length; i++) {\n                    cs.addRect(margin + i * (tableWidth / 3), yStart - rowHeight, tableWidth / 3, rowHeight);\n                    cs.stroke();\n                    cs.beginText();\n                    cs.newLineAtOffset(margin + i * (tableWidth / 3) + 5, yStart - rowHeight + 5);\n                    cs.showText(headers[i]);\n                    cs.endText();\n                }\n\n                // Data\n                float yPos = yStart - rowHeight;\n                for (String[] row : data) {\n                    yPos -= rowHeight;\n                    for (int i = 0; i < row.length; i++) {\n                        cs.addRect(margin + i * (tableWidth / 3), yPos, tableWidth / 3, rowHeight);\n                        cs.stroke();\n                        cs.beginText();\n                        cs.newLineAtOffset(margin + i * (tableWidth / 3) + 5, yPos + 5);\n                        cs.showText(row[i]);\n                        cs.endText();\n