How to set up a table display?

I have an application that I want to print an invoice like document in a table setup. Does anyone have a piece of code to use as a starting point?

I have an application that I want to print an invoice like document in a table setup. Each line in the table will be from a separate document from a database. The iteration through the Db is not an issue but I want it to display something like this:

Rough table layout

I can determine the total number of lines in the table in advance if that makes any difference. Does anyone have a piece of code to use as a starting point?

Posted on StackOverflow on Jun 30, 2015 by Bill F

Please take a look at the SimpleTable11 example and the PDF that is created when you run that code: simple_table11.pdf

Database query rendered to PDF table

As you need different types of Cell instance (without/with thick border, with/without, colspan, left/right aligned), you will benefit from writing a helper method:

public Cell createCell(String content, float borderWidth, int colspan, TextAlignment alignment) {
    Cell cell = new Cell(1, colspan).add(new Paragraph(content));
    cell.setTextAlignment(alignment);
    cell.setBorder(new SolidBorder(borderWidth));
    return cell;
}

Using this method will make your code easier to read and maintain.

This is how we create the document and add the table:

public void createPdf(String dest) throws IOException {
    PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter(dest));
    Document doc = new Document(pdfDoc);

    Table table = new Table(new float[]{1, 2, 1, 1, 1});
    table.setWidthPercent(100);
    table.addCell(createCell("SKU", 2, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
    table.addCell(createCell("Description", 2, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
    table.addCell(createCell("Unit Price", 2, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
    table.addCell(createCell("Quantity", 2, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
    table.addCell(createCell("Extension", 2, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
    String[][] data = {
            {"ABC123", "The descriptive text may be more than one line and the text should wrap automatically",
                    "$5.00", "10", "$50.00"},
            {"QRS557", "Another description", "$100.00", "15", "$1,500.00"},
    };
    for (String[] row : data) {
        table.addCell(createCell(row[0], 1, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
        table.addCell(createCell(row[1], 1, 1, TextAlignment.LEFT));
        table.addCell(createCell(row[2], 1, 1, TextAlignment.RIGHT));
        table.addCell(createCell(row[3], 1, 1, TextAlignment.RIGHT));
        table.addCell(createCell(row[4], 1, 1, TextAlignment.RIGHT));
    }
    table.addCell(createCell("Totals", 2, 4, TextAlignment.LEFT));
    table.addCell(createCell("$1,552.00", 2, 1, TextAlignment.RIGHT));
    doc.add(table);

    doc.close();
}

As you indicated that you already have the code to loop over the records in a database, I mimicked those records using a two-dimensional String array.

Click How to set up a table display? if you want to see how to answer this question in iText 5.