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Home » Newsletter » May 2008

By Santhanam L.

In this article, we will see how to render tabular data using the class PdfTable.

A table can be created by calling the constructor:

PdfTable(
  int columns, 
  double[] colwidth, 
  double cellHeight, 
  int measurementUnit)

In this constructor, columns is the number of columns in the table, colwidth specifies widths of all columns in the table, cellHeight specifies height of columns in the table, measurementUnit is a constant specifying the measurement unit with which the width and height are specified.

You can specify the padding levels in the cells by using the methods:

PdfTable.setCellBottomMargin(double cellBottomMargin);
PdfTable.setCellTopMargin(double cellTopMargin);
PdfTable.setCellLeftMargin(double cellLeftMargin);
PdfTable.setCellRightMargin(double cellRightMargin);

Then, individual cells can be added using the methods such as addCell(int rowSpan, int colSpan, String text, PdfFont font, Color backgroundColor). The rowSpan and colSpan arguments specify how many rows or columns the cell should span.

Here is the code snippet that puts it all together.

PdfDocument doc1 = new PdfDocument();
		
// Create a PDF page
PdfPage page = new PdfPage();

// Create a table
PdfTable tb = 
	new PdfTable(
	      3, 
	      new double[] { 1, 2, 2},
	      0.5, 
	      PdfMeasurement.MU_INCHES);
// Specify cell padding
tb.setCellBottomMargin(0.1);
tb.setCellTopMargin(0.1);
tb.setCellLeftMargin(0.1);
tb.setCellRightMargin(0.1);

PdfFont fHelveticaBold = 
    PdfFont.create("Helvetica", 
                   PdfFont.BOLD, 
                   12, 
                   PdfEncodings.CP1252);
fHelveticaBold.setColor(Color.BLACK);

// Add "Row 1" cells to the table
tb.addCell(1, 1, "S.No.", Color.LIGHT_GRAY, 
           fHelveticaBold, PdfTextFormatter.CENTER);
tb.addCell(1, 1, "First Name", Color.LIGHT_GRAY, 
           fHelveticaBold, PdfTextFormatter.CENTER);
tb.addCell(1, 1, "Second Name", Color.LIGHT_GRAY, 
           fHelveticaBold, PdfTextFormatter.CENTER);

// Add "Row 2" cells to the table		
tb.addCell(1, 1, "1.");
tb.addCell(1, 1, "Abraham");
tb.addCell(1, 1, "Lincoln");

// Add "Row 3" cells to the table
tb.addCell(1, 1, "2.");
tb.addCell(1, 1, "Thomas");
tb.addCell(1, 1, "Jefferson");

// Add "Row 4" cells to the table
tb.addCell(2, 1, "3.");
tb.addCell(1, 2, "George");
tb.addCell(1, 2, "Washington");

// Add the table to the page
page.addTable(tb, 100, 100);
	
doc1.add(page);
doc1.setOpenAfterSave(true);
doc1.save("PdfTable_example.pdf");
doc1.close();