Spring MVC - Generate PDF Example

The following example shows how to generate a PDF using the Spring Web MVC Framework. To start with, let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and adhere to the following steps to develop a Dynamic Form based Web Application using the Spring Web Framework.

PDFController.java

package com.howcodex;

import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.AbstractController;

public class PDFController extends AbstractController {

   @Override
   protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      //user data
      Map<String,String> userData = new HashMap<String,String>();
      userData.put("1", "Mahesh");
      userData.put("2", "Suresh");
      userData.put("3", "Ramesh");
      userData.put("4", "Naresh");
      return new ModelAndView("UserSummary","userData",userData);
   }
}

UserExcelView.java

package com.howcodex;

import java.util.Map;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractPdfView;

import com.lowagie.text.Document;
import com.lowagie.text.Table;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;

public class UserPDFView extends AbstractPdfView {

   protected void buildPdfDocument(Map<String, Object> model, Document document,
      PdfWriter pdfWriter, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
      throws Exception {
      Map<String,String> userData = (Map<String,String>) model.get("userData");

      Table table = new Table(2);
      table.addCell("Roll No");
      table.addCell("Name");

      for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : userData.entrySet()) {
         table.addCell(entry.getKey());
         table.addCell(entry.getValue());
      }
      document.add(table);
   }
}

TestWeb-servlet.xml

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:context = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"   
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:mvc = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">
   <bean class = "org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping" />

   <bean class = "com.howcodex.PDFController" />

   <bean class = "org.springframework.web.servlet.view.XmlViewResolver">
      <property name = "location">
         <value>/WEB-INF/views.xml</value>
      </property>
   </bean>
</beans>

views.xml

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:context = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">

   <bean id = "UserSummary" class = "com.howcodex.UserPDFView"></bean>
</beans>

Here, we have created a PDFController and UserPDFView. iText library deals with the PDF file formats and will convert the data to a PDF document.

Once you are done with creating source and configuration files, export your application. Right click on your application, use Export → WAR File option and save the TestWeb.war file in Tomcat's webapps folder.

Now, start the Tomcat server and make sure you are able to access other webpages from the webapps folder using a standard browser. We can also try the following URL − http://localhost:8080/TestWeb/pdf and if all goes as planned, we will see the following screen.