I am trying to use iText for pdf file generation and I have a question regarding the generation. I would like to serve the PDF to the browser so that the browser displays it, without actually creating a file.
What would be the best approach to achieve this?
One limitation is that I would need to use it from a JSP page - something that would circumvent the "getOutputStream has already been called once" error is what I am looking for.
I would like to serve the PDF to the browser so that the browser displays it, without actually creating a file.
Just pass responsegetOutputStream()
instead of new FileOutputStream
to PdfWriter
.
PdfWriter pdfWriter = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, response.getOutputStream());
// ...
One limitation is that I would need to use it from a JSP page - something that would circumvent the "getOutputStream has already been called once" error is what I am looking for.
Just remove any whitespace outside <% %>
in JSP, including newlines. They are implicitly sent to the response by the response writer.
I.e. do NOT
<% page import="foo" %>
<% page import="bar" %>
<%
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
out.println("I should not use scriptlets.");
}
%>
(newline here)
but more so
<% page import="foo" %><% page import="bar" %><%
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
out.println("I should use servlets.");
}
%>
Or better, don't put Java code in JSP files. JSP files are designed to present template text like HTML, not to do entirely different things. Do that in a normal Java class like a servlet.
Write it to the servlet output stream, remembering to set the encoding to the correct value
This http://onjava.com/onjava/2003/06/18/dynamic_files.html explains how to do it