Create New PDF File from Scratch using Apache PDFBox

create-pdf-with-apache-pdfbox.java

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.font.PDType1Font;

import java.io.IOException;

public class CreatePDFExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // 1. Create a new empty document
        try (PDDocument document = new PDDocument()) {
            
            // 2. Create a blank page (A4 size by default)
            PDPage page = new PDPage();
            document.addPage(page);
            
            // 3. Prepare content for the page
            try (PDPageContentStream contentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page)) {
                
                // 4. Begin text content
                contentStream.beginText();
                
                // 5. Set font and font size
                contentStream.setFont(PDType1Font.HELVETICA_BOLD, 12);
                
                // 6. Position the text (x,y coordinates from bottom-left corner)
                contentStream.newLineAtOffset(100, 700);
                
                // 7. Add text content
                contentStream.showText("Hello, PDFBox!");
                contentStream.newLineAtOffset(0, -20);  // Move down 20 units
                contentStream.showText("This is a new PDF created with Java.");
                
                // 8. End text content
                contentStream.endText();
            }
            
            // 9. Save the document to file
            document.save("new-document.pdf");
            System.out.println("PDF created successfully!");
            
        } catch (IOException e) {
            System.err.println("Error creating PDF: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}