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 Ecppse IDE in place and adhere to the following steps to develop a Dynamic Form based Web Apppcation using the Spring Web Framework.

PDFController.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

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;

pubpc 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.tutorialspoint;

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;

pubpc 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.tutorialspoint.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.tutorialspoint.UserPDFView"></bean>
</beans>

Here, we have created a PDFController and UserPDFView. iText pbrary 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 apppcation. Right cpck on your apppcation, 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.