How to invoke a page break for nested tables?

Legacy notice!

iText 5 is the previous major version of iText’s leading PDF SDK. iText 5 is EOL, and is no longer developed, although we still provide support and security fixes. Switch your project to iText 8, our latest version which supports the latest PDF standards and technologies.
Check related iText 8 content!

When my inner table has more rows, the table splits on the first page, and starts the inner table on the second page.

I have one PdfPTable with one column. One page fits 50 rows. If I add some text data to table (for an example, 300 rows), the report looks fine. When I nest a PdfPTable with a limited number of rows into a cell, all works fine too:

/--------
20 string rows
inner table (20 rows)
10 string rows
/-------
...additional rows

But, when my inner table has more rows, the table splits on the first page, and starts the inner table on the second page:

/---------
20 string rows
whitespace for 30 rows
/---------
inner table (50 rows from 90)
/---------
inner table (40 rows from 90)
..additional data

I need this:

/---------
20 string rows
inner table (30 rows from 90)
/---------
inner table (50 rows from 90)
/---------
inner table (10 rows from 80)
..additional data

Posted on StackOverflow on Nov 28, 2012 by degr

Please take a look at the NestedTables2 example. In this example, we tell iText that it's OK to split cells as soon as a row doesn't fit on a page:

Nested table

This is not the default: by default, iText will try to keep a row intact by forwarding it to the next page. Only if the row doesn't fit the page, the row will be split.

Changing the default involves adding a single line to your code. That line is called: table.setSplitLate(false);

This is the full method that created the PDF shown in the screen shot:

public void createPdf(String dest) throws IOException, DocumentException {
    Document document = new Document();
    PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(dest));
    document.open();
    PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(2);
    table.setSplitLate(false);
    table.setWidths(new int[]{1, 15});
    for (int i = 1; i