Write a pdf document from Spring controller.

In this article, I am going to demonstrate a simple way that we could support pdf download from server. We will generate a pdf document in the server using itextpdf api. And then we will write the pdf document in the output stream.

First add the dependency in the pom.xml

<dependency>
   <groupId>com.itextpdf</groupId>
   <artifactId>itextpdf</artifactId>
   <version>5.0.6</version>
  </dependency>

Next step, define a method where you write the functionality to write a pdf document.

@RequestMapping(value="/getpdf", method=RequestMethod.GET)
 public ResponseEntity<byte[]> getPdf(@RequestBody String json){
  String text = json;
  
        if (text == null || text.trim().length() == 0) {
             text = "You didn't enter any text.";
        }
        // step 1
        Document document = new Document();
        // step 2
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        try {
   PdfWriter.getInstance(document, baos);
    // step 3
         document.open();
         // step 4
         document.add(new Paragraph(String.format(
             "You have submitted the following text using the %s method:",
             "getpdf")));
         document.add(new Paragraph(text));
         // step 5
         document.close();
  } catch (DocumentException e) {
   // TODO Auto-generated catch block
   e.printStackTrace();
  }

       
        
     // retrieve contents of "C:/tmp/report.pdf"
     byte[] contents = baos.toByteArray();

     HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
     headers.setContentType(MediaType.parseMediaType("application/pdf"));
     String filename = "output.pdf";
     headers.setContentDispositionFormData(filename, filename);
     headers.setCacheControl("must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0");
     ResponseEntity<byte[]> response = new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(contents, headers, HttpStatus.OK);
     return response;
 }

Reference:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16652760/return-generated-pdf-using-spring-mvc
http://itextpdf.com/examples/iia.php?id=173