Java library for creating fluid page layouts with Apache PDFBox.

Please check the test files to see how to create PDFs with the different elements.

The basic elements provided are:

• PageLayoutPDF - the entry class, having a list of page sets
• PLPageSet - a set of pages that share the same size and orientation and contain a set of elements. The assignments to pages happens dynamically.
• PL elements - basic or complex layout elements ("PL" is short for "PDF Layout")
  • Basic (inline) elements are
    • plain text in class PLText (Unicode of course)
      • For custom Open Source fonts to be used see the https://github.com/phax/ph-fonts project
      • Note: the available characters heavily depend on the used font. So if you get a "?" character, try loading a different font
    • and image in classes PLImage and PLStreamImage (whatever ImageIO can load).
  • Basic (block) element is box (class PLBox)
  • Layout elements are
    • horizontal box or h-box in class PLHBox - like a row of a table
    • vertical box or v-box in class PLVBox - like a column of a table
    • spacer-x in class PLSpacerX - a horizontal spacer - just in case you need explicit distance to a certain element
    • spacer-y in class PLSpacerY - a vertical spacer - just in case you need explicit distance to a certain element
    • page break in class PLPageBreak - an explicit page break that starts a new page
  • The most complex element is a table, which consists of a number of "h-boxes" (rows) which itself consist of a number of "v-boxes" (columns) plus comes with repeating headlines etc.
    • See classes PLTable, PLTableRow and PLTableCell for details
  • Elements can have the following properties - if you know CSS you should be familiar with it:
    • "min-size" - the minimum element size
    • "max-size" - the maximum element size
    • "margin" - a transparent outer border (outside of the border)
    • "border" - a visible border with different styles (between padding and margin)
    • "padding" - a transparent inner border (inside of the border)
    • "fill-color" - the background or fill color of an element

A set of example files as created from the unit test can be found in folder example-files. The source code for these examples is https://github.com/phax/ph-pdf-layout/tree/master/src/test/java/com/helger/pdflayout

Similar libraries in this context:

• https://github.com/ralfstuckert/pdfbox-layout - seems to focus more on text layouting

Add the following to your pom.xml to use this artifact, replacing x.y.z with the real version number:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.helger</groupId>
  <artifactId>ph-pdf-layout4</artifactId>
  <version>x.y.z</version>
</dependency>

Between v4.0.0 and v5.2.2 the artifactId was called ph-pdf-layout4

• v7.3.3 - work in progress
  • Updated to PDFBox 3.0.2
• v7.3.2 - 2024-03-27
  • Updated to ph-commons 11.1.5
  • Created Java 21 compatibility
  • Extracted a parent POM and prepared a submodule structure
  • Using https://github.com/red6/pdfcompare to test created PDFs against the stored ones. See issue #35 - thx @Lolf1010
• v7.3.1 - 2024-01-24
  • Updated to PDFBox 3.0.1
  • Added support for clipping content of block elements via .setClipContent(boolean). See issue #34 - thx @terrason
• v7.3.0 - 2023-10-30
  • Completely removed usage of java.awt.Color. Backwards incompatible change. This finalizes issue #32.
• v7.2.0 - 2023-10-30
  • Added new class PLColor and deprecated all methods using java.awt.Color. Backwards incompatible change. See issue #32 - thx @AndroidDeveloperLB
• v7.1.0 - 2023-08-20
  • Updated to PDFBox 3.0.0
• v7.0.1 - 2023-07-31
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.29
  • Updated to ph-commons 11.1.0
  • Improved API to create an empty cell. See issue #29 - thx @fheldt
• v7.0.0 - 2022-09-14
  • Using Java 11 as the baseline
  • Updated to ph-commons 11
• v6.0.3 - 2022-08-17
  • Added support for PDF/A creation in PageLayoutPDF - thx @robertholfeld for publishing this in his branch
• v6.0.2 - 2022-05-25
  • Extended PDPageContentStreamWithCache API. See issue #23 - thx @schneidh
• v6.0.1 - 2022-05-07
  • Updated to jbig2-imageio 3.0.4
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.26
  • Added support for creating external links via new class PLExternalLink. See issue #14 - thx @rgarg-atheer and @martin19
• v6.0.0 - 2022-01-05
  • Changed artifactId from ph-pdf-layout4 to ph-pdf-layout
  • Changed Java namespaces com.helger.pdflayout4.* to com.helger.pdflayout.*
• v5.2.2 - 2021-12-29
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.25
  • Extended IPLHasMargin with (set|add)Margin(X|Y) to set or add to vertical or horizontal margin at once
  • Extended IPLHasPadding with (set|add)Padding(X|Y) to set or add to vertical or horizontal padding at once
• v5.2.1 - 2021-03-22
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.23
• v5.2.0 - 2021-03-21
  • Updated to ph-commons 10
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.22
  • Add syntactic sugar method PLTableCell.createEmptyCell()
• v5.1.2 - 2020-06-15
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.20
  • Allow different page content height if the first page header and footer have different heights. See issue #14.
• v5.1.1 - 2020-05-29
  • Updated to ph-fonts 4.1.0 (changed Maven groupId)
• v5.1.0 - 2020-03-29
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.19
  • Updated to jbig2-imageio 3.0.3
  • Fixed line spacing on page break (see issue #10)
  • Allow table columns with different WidthSpec types, as long as colspan is 1.
  • Added another generic parameter to IPLSplittableObject
  • Made PageLayoutPDF API more chainable
  • New class PLBulletPointList can be used to create regular bullet point lists (see issue #9)
  • Updated to ph-commons 9.4.0
• v5.0.9 - 2019-04-29
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.15 (security update)
• v5.0.8 - 2018-11-22
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.12
  • Updated to ph-commons 9.2.0
• v5.0.7 - 2018-07-10
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.11
• v5.0.6 - 2018-06-21
  • Updated to org.apache.pdfbox:jbig2-imageio for JPEG handling
  • Fixed OSGI ServiceProvider configuration
  • Updated to ph-commons 9.1.2
• v5.0.5 - 2018-04-16
  • Something went wrong when publishing to Maven Central - next try
• v5.0.4 - 2018-04-16
  • Do not justify the last line of multiline text
• v5.0.3 - 2018-04-16
  • Added ph-collection dependency for issue #4
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.9
  • Added possibility to justify text
• v5.0.2 - 2018-02-21
  • Added possibility to use special page header and footer on the first page of a PLPageSet
• v5.0.1 - 2018-02-12
  • Added image type support (issue #3)
  • Updated to BouncyCastle 1.59
  • Added new table grid types
• v5.0.0 - 2017-11-09
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.8
  • Updated to ph-commons 9.0.0
  • Updated to BouncyCastle 1.58
• v4.0.1 - 2017-05-16
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.6
  • Slight API extensions
• v4.0.0 - 2017-02-22
  • No change compared to 4.0.0 Beta 5
• v4.0.0 Beta 5 - 2017-01-19
  • Improved XML serialization slightly
  • Fixed an NPE with PLBox without a contained element
• v4.0.0 Beta 4 - 2017-01-10
  • Block elements use full width now by default
  • Improved placeholder handling in text preparation
• v4.0.0 Beta 3 - 2017-01-10
  • Binds to ph-commons 8.6.x
  • Fixed a height problem with vertical split HBoxes
  • Simplified class hierarchy for table rows
  • Made font fallback code point more flexible
  • Changed font rendering to use descent from font instead of heuristics
  • Fixed different border color rendering
  • Made debug rendering customizable
  • Added support for line spacing in PLText
• v4.0.0 Beta 2 - 2017-01-03
  • The Maven artifact name was changed to 'ph-pdf-layout4' so that it can be used side-by-side with version 3.
  • The global package name was changed from com.helger.pdflayout to com.helger.pdflayout4 so that both 3.x and 4.x can run side-by-side
  • This is major rewrite to be closer to the CSS box model
  • VBox and HBox have no more layout information assigned to them
  • Added a new element "Box" that allows for easy alignment etc.
  • Separation between renderable objects, block element (box) and inline elements (text and image)
  • New class design for tables, so that each table cell is automatically represented by a box, each table row is a separate object
  • Added a simple grid system for tables to build the default grids easily
  • Added new "auto" width/height for columns/rows
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.4
• v3.5.3 - 2017-11-07
  • Binds to ph-commons 9.0.0
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.8
  • Updated to BouncyCastle 1.58
• v3.5.2 - 2017-01-10
  • Binds to ph-commons 8.6.x
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.4
• v3.5.1 - 2016-10-07
  • Fixed a rendering flaw with borders
• v3.5.0 - 2016-09-21
  • Changed internal class hierarchy to prepare for future changes
  • Changed package assignments for better grouping
• v3.0.3 - 2016-09-19
  • Updated to PDFBox 2.0.3
  • Performance improvement by using optimized writer
  • Included optional MicroTypeConverters
• v3.0.2 - 2016-09-06
  • API extensions for the classes in the "spec" package
• v3.0.1 - never released because of issues with the release script :(
• v3.0.0 - 2016-08-21
  • Requires JDK 8
  • Still on PDFBox 2.0.0 because of problems with 2.0.1 and 2.0.2

Version starting with 2.1.0 uses PDFBox 2.x, previous versions (up to and including 2.0.0) use PDFBox 1.8.x. Note: version 4.0.0 has troubles building with JDK 1.8.0_92 - updating to 1.8.0_112 or later should work.

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