How to rotate a page while creating a PDF document?

I can set the size of the page to landscape but the content is still oriented left->right while I would like it to be bottom->top.

I want to produce a PDF with pages in landscape. While I can set the size of the page to landscape using document.setPageSize(PageSize.LETTER.rotate());, it this doesn't achieve what I want. The content is still oriented left->right while I would like it to be bottom->top.

This is what I get

This is what I want

I have been able to achieve the desired output by opening the PDF after it has been created and rotating it using iText, but I would like a solution that lets me rotate it immediately with iText after adding content to it.

Posted on StackOverflow on Jan 29, 2013 by Natan Villaescusa

Excellent question. If I was able to upvote it twice, I would!

You can achieve what you want in iText 7 with the EventHandler interface:

protected class PageRotationEventHandler implements IEventHandler {
    protected PdfNumber rotation = PORTRAIT;
    public void setRotation(PdfNumber orientation) {
        this.rotation = orientation;
    }
    @Override
    public void handleEvent(Event event) {
        PdfDocumentEvent docEvent = (PdfDocumentEvent) event;
        docEvent.getPage().put(PdfName.Rotate, rotation);
    }
}

You should use this PageRotationEventHandler right after you've defined the writer:

PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter(dest));
PageRotationEventHandler eventHandler = new PageRotationEventHandler();
pdfDoc.addEventHandler(PdfDocumentEvent.START_PAGE, eventHandler);

Note that I used SEASCAPE to get the orientation shown in your image.

The possible values for the rotation in iText7 are the following:

INVERTEDPORTRAIT = new PdfNumber(180);
LANDSCAPE = new PdfNumber(90);
PORTRAIT = new PdfNumber(0);
SEASCAPE = new PdfNumber(270);

Click How to rotate a page while creating a PDF document? if you want to see how to answer this question in iText 5.