Convert Excel File to PDF in Java Example

Until now, we have been discussing in length on converting MS Excel documents to CSV files in Java. In this example, we are going to explain how to convert an Excel document (Office 97 – 2003 format) to PDF file in Java. Specifically, I’m interested in extracting an excel table data and create a PDF table data out of it. There are two key elements to this objective:

• Read Excel documents using Apache POI
• Create Table in PDF document using iText

I have provided relevant hyperlinks to these two fragments, you can go through them if required. We will now write a Java program that combines these two key elements and provide the output we are looking for.

Input Excel Table Data:

A snapshot of the input XLS data is give below:

XLS to PDF in Java- Input Spreadsheet

The objective is to transform this data to a PDF table data.

XLS to PDF – JAR Files

You would need the following Java libraries and associated JAR files for the program to work.

• POI v3.8
• iText v5.3.4

Excel to PDF – Java Program Example

The complete Java code that accepts Excel spreadsheet data as an input and transforms that to a PDF table data is provided below:

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.*;
//POI libraries to read Excel File
import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFWorkbook;
import org.apache.poi.hssf.usermodel.HSSFSheet;
import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.*;
import java.util.Iterator;
//itext libraries to write PDF file
import com.itextpdf.text.*;
import com.itextpdf.text.pdf.*;

public class excel2pdf {  
        public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
                //First we read the Excel file in binary format into FileInputStream
                FileInputStream input_document = new FileInputStream(new File("C:\\excel_to_pdf.xls"));
                // Read workbook into HSSFWorkbook
                HSSFWorkbook my_xls_workbook = new HSSFWorkbook(input_document); 
                // Read worksheet into HSSFSheet
                HSSFSheet my_worksheet = my_xls_workbook.getSheetAt(0); 
                // To iterate over the rows
                Iterator<Row> rowIterator = my_worksheet.iterator();
                //We will create output PDF document objects at this point
                Document iText_xls_2_pdf = new Document();
                PdfWriter.getInstance(iText_xls_2_pdf, new FileOutputStream("Excel2PDF_Output.pdf"));
                iText_xls_2_pdf.open();
                //we have two columns in the Excel sheet, so we create a PDF table with two columns
                //Note: There are ways to make this dynamic in nature, if you want to.
                PdfPTable my_table = new PdfPTable(2);
                //We will use the object below to dynamically add new data to the table
                PdfPCell table_cell;
                //Loop through rows.
                while(rowIterator.hasNext()) {
                        Row row = rowIterator.next(); 
                        Iterator<Cell> cellIterator = row.cellIterator();
                                while(cellIterator.hasNext()) {
                                        Cell cell = cellIterator.next(); //Fetch CELL
                                        switch(cell.getCellType()) { //Identify CELL type
                                                //you need to add more code here based on
                                                //your requirement / transformations
                                        case Cell.CELL_TYPE_STRING:
                                                //Push the data from Excel to PDF Cell
                                                 table_cell=new PdfPCell(new Phrase(cell.getStringCellValue()));
                                                 //feel free to move the code below to suit to your needs
                                                 my_table.addCell(table_cell);
                                                break;
                                        }
                                        //next line
                                }
                
                }
                //Finally add the table to PDF document
                iText_xls_2_pdf.add(my_table);                       
                iText_xls_2_pdf.close();                
                //we created our pdf file..
                input_document.close(); //close xls
        }
}

Example Output

The Java program provided above creates a PDF file “Excel2PDF_Output.pdf” which will have your Excel sheet data. A screen dump of the PDF document produced by the code is given below:

Excel to PDF in Java - Output PDF Document

That completes a very quick and basic tutorial to convert XLS table data into PDF table using Apache POI and iText, in Java. There is tremendous scope to customize the table to include styles etc. You can test this example and change it to suit to your needs. If you have a question on the functionality meanwhile, you can post it as a comment back to us. We will have a look.