How to define different border types for a single cell?

Example table

I think you are mixing up things.

If you use CellRenderer to draw borders, you create custom borders, you should remove all automated borders. So you always need:

 cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);

If you want to draw partial borders, you need to draw partial borders.

When you add a border using a cell renderer, you add a number of lines using a sequence of moveTo(), lineTo() and stroke() commands. In other words: you decide which lines are drawn. If you want to reduce the number of borders drawn, you need to draw less lines.

Please take a look at the DottedLineCell2 example. This is a variation on the example you refer to. In this example, I create a renderer that draws each border separately:

class DottedLineCellRenderer extends CellRenderer { boolean[] borders;

public DottedLineCellRenderer(Cell modelElement, boolean[] borders) {
    super(modelElement);
    this.borders = new boolean[borders.length];
    for (int i = 0; i 

}

You have to pass a value for each border and in the draw() method, we'll look at this border value:

• When the first element of array has True value ( TOP ), we construct a line from the upper-right corner to the upper-left corner,

• When the second element of array has True value (BOTTOM), we construct a line from the lower-right corner to the lower-left corner,

• When the third element of array has True value (RIGHT), we construct a line from the upper-right corner to the lower-right corner,

• When the fourth element of array has True value (LEFT), we construct a line from the upper-left corner to the lower-left corner.

Once we've checked all the sides of the border, we stroke() the lines.

In the following example, I create two tables:

public void manipulatePdf(String dest) throws Exception { PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter(dest)); Document document = new Document(pdfDoc); Table table; Cell cell;

    table = new Table(4);
    table.setMarginBottom(30);
    cell = new Cell().add("left border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{false, true, false, false}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("right border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{false, false, false, true}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("top border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{true, false, false, false}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("bottom border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{false, false, true, false}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    document.add(table);

    table = new Table(4);
    table.setMarginBottom(30);
    cell = new Cell().add("left and top border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{true, true, false, false}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("right and bottom border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{false, false, true, true}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("no border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("full border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new DottedLineCellRenderer(cell,
            new boolean[]{true, true, true, true}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    document.add(table);
    document.close();
}

This is what the two tables look like: dotted_line_cell2.pdf

Table cells with different border types

Update:

You can't adapt the cell renderer into a renderer that draws different types of borders.

Example shown above is not the only way: there are many different ways to achieve the result you desire. Allow me to present one more example :

Extra example: Using an interface to define the line dash:

In the CustomBorder3 example, I copy/pasted the cell renderer from my previous example and I adapted it like this:

class CustomBorder3Renderer extends CellRenderer { ILineDash[] borders;

    public CustomBorder3Renderer(Cell modelElement, ILineDash[] borders) {
        super(modelElement);
        this.borders = new ILineDash[borders.length];
        for (int i = 0; i 

I draw a line for each of those values that is different from null.

The variables are of type ILineDash. ILineDash is an interface with a single method:

interface ILineDash {
    void applyLineDash(PdfCanvas canvas);
}

I created three implementations for this interface:

class Solid implements ILineDash {
    public void applyLineDash(PdfCanvas canvas) {
    }
}
class Dotted implements ILineDash {
    public void applyLineDash(PdfCanvas canvas) {
        canvas.setLineCapStyle(PdfCanvasConstants.LineCapStyle.ROUND);
        canvas.setLineDash(0, 4, 2);
    }
}
class Dashed implements ILineDash {
    public void applyLineDash(PdfCanvas canvas) {
        canvas.setLineDash(3, 3);
    }
}

You can easily create new implementations such as:

class DashedLine2 implements ILineDash {
    float unitsOn;
    float phase;
    public DashedLine2(float unitsOn, float phase) {
        this.unitsOn = unitsOn;
        this.phase = phase;
    }
    public void applyLineDash(PdfCanvas canvas) {
        canvas.setLineDash(unitsOn, phase);
    }
}

You could even introduce an implementation that changes the color and the width of the border.

I can now use the CustomBorder renderer like this:

public void manipulatePdf(String dest) throws Exception {
    PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(new PdfWriter(dest));
    Document document = new Document(pdfDoc);

    ILineDash solid = new Solid();
    ILineDash dotted = new Dotted();
    ILineDash dashed = new Dashed();

    Table table;
    Cell cell;

    table = new Table(4);
    table.setMarginBottom(30);
    cell = new Cell().add("dotted left border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{null, dotted, null, null}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("solid right border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{null, null, null, solid}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("dashed top border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{dashed, null, null, null}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("bottom border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{null, null, solid, null}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    document.add(table);

    table = new Table(4);
    table.setMarginBottom(30);
    cell = new Cell().add("dotted left and solid top border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{solid, dotted, null, null}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("dashed right and dashed bottom border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{null, null, dashed, dashed}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("no border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    table.addCell(cell);
    cell = new Cell().add("full solid border");
    cell.setBorder(Border.NO_BORDER);
    cell.setNextRenderer(new CustomBorder3Renderer(cell,
            new ILineDash[]{solid, solid, solid, solid}));
    table.addCell(cell);
    document.add(table);
    document.close();
}

The result looks like this:

Table cells with different border types

Click How to define different border types for a single cell? if you want to see how to answer this question in iText 5.