iText is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
The most recent version is iText 5.0.1.
You can DOWNLOAD IT HERE.
iText is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
iText is an ideal library for developers looking to enhance web- and other applications with dynamic PDF document generation and/or manipulation. iText is not an end-user tool. Typically you won't use it on your Desktop as you would use Acrobat or any other PDF application. Rather, you'll build iText into your own applications so that you can automate the PDF creation and manipulation process. For instance in one or more of the following situations:
- Due to time or size, the PDF documents can't be produced manually.
- The content of the document must be calculated or based on user input.
- The content needs to be customized or personalized.
- The PDF content needs to be served in a web environment.
- Documents are to be created in "batch process" mode.
You can use iText to:
- Serve PDF to a browser
- Generate dynamic documents from XML files or databases
- Use PDF's many interactive features
- Add bookmarks, page numbers, watermarks, etc.
- Split, concatenate, and manipulate PDF pages
- Automate filling out of PDF forms
- Add digital signatures to a PDF file
- And much more...
In short: the iText classes are very useful for people who need to generate read-only, platform independent documents containing text, lists, tables and images; or who want to perform specific manipulations on existing PDF documents. The library is especially useful in combination with Java(TM) technology-based Servlets; there's also a .NET port available: iTextSharp (written in C#).
iText requires Java 5. It's available for free under the GNU Affero General Public License (see the Terms of Use).
If you want to use the iText classes you should be
acquainted with JAVA (TM) programming.
You'll also need the following Software:
- The Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.5 (or any later version) from Sun Microsystems Incorporated.
- The BouncyCastle: bcprov, bcmail, and bctsp
A good place to start learning how to use iText is the book iText in Action - 2nd Edition.
back to main page- Changes made by Paulo Soares
- PdfPKCS7: More robust timestamp extraction.
- PdfPKCS7: Ripemd didn't work, some kind of signed attributes couldn't be verified correctly.
- PdfStamperImp: Avoid accessing directly member variables from other classes.
- PdfSmartCopy: Check deeper for comparison.
- Rotation in PdfPCell: take mod before making positive.
- Changes made by Kevin Day
- Fix NPE when parsing Type 0 fonts without a ToUnicode map (I've seen some winding font entries stored as Type 0 instead of TT in some pdf files)
- Adjusted unicode to cid mapping so it takes the first one found from DocumentFont. This is just a band-aid, as it doesn't address cases where multiple cids may map to single unicode value.
- Fix byte to int sign conversion
- Enhance text parsing to handle fonts with encoding but no ToUnicode map. Ref Bug #2792227
- Changes made by Bruno Lowagie
- PdfPRow: Cheating a little bit more to deal with a floating point problem (until we can solve this in a more structural way)
- PdfPTable/PdfPRow/PdfPCell: Fix a bug for the new rowspan funtionality
- PdfStamperImp: Solved NPE problems with producer string
- Image in Chunk: Taking into account the top border width of the Image in case the leading has to be changed to accommodate for the image height.
- RtfList: The public void writeContent(final OutputStream result) method needs to output RtfParagraph.PARAGRAPH_DEFAULTS after every list. Patch posted anonymously to SF (#2809140).
- RtfFont: When adding a paragraph, table cell or other Phrase without specifing the font, by default the "unknown" font is created in the font table. Like: {\f3\froman\fcharset0 unknown;} Word 2000 doesn't recognise the unknown font and waits indefinately. Patch provided by M. Smith on the SF Bugtracker (#2807621)