How to get particular html table contents to write it in pdf using itext

Question

I have used iText to export the table contents to pdf.

Here is my code:

JSP:

<%@ page language=\"java\" contentType=\"text/html; charset=I         


        

Answer 1

It's ocorring because of line $("#datatoexport").val($("#customers").html()); where the Jquery method .html retrieve the entire html from the html table. There is not easy way to extract text from a html table, you will need a parse function in jquery like in this post: Getting text from td cells with jQuery

In adiction, the sample that you post isn't the best form to request a server processing text, look in this How to use Servlets and Ajax?

Answer 2

Please take a look at the examples ParseHtmlTable1 and ParseHtmlTable2. They create the following PDFs: html_table_1.pdf and html_table_2.pdf.

The table is created like this:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("<table border=\"2\">");
sb.append("<tr>");
sb.append("<th>Sr. No.</th>");
sb.append("<th>Text Data</th>");
sb.append("<th>Number Data</th>");
sb.append("</tr>");
for (int i = 0; i < 10; ) {
    i++;
    sb.append("<tr>");
    sb.append("<td>");
    sb.append(i);
    sb.append("</td>");
    sb.append("<td>This is text data ");
    sb.append(i);
    sb.append("</td>");
    sb.append("<td>");
    sb.append(i);
    sb.append("</td>");
    sb.append("</tr>");
}
sb.append("</table>");

I've taken the liberty to define the CSS like this:

tr { text-align: center; }
th { background-color: lightgreen; padding: 3px; }
td {background-color: lightblue;  padding: 3px; }

In another answer, it was already mentioned that your design is flawed. You should learn how to create a decent architecture. Separating data (e.g. the table) and style (e.g. the colors) is one example where you can improve.

Now we parse the CSS and the HTML like this:

CSSResolver cssResolver = new StyleAttrCSSResolver();
CssFile cssFile = XMLWorkerHelper.getCSS(new ByteArrayInputStream(CSS.getBytes()));
cssResolver.addCss(cssFile);
// HTML
HtmlPipelineContext htmlContext = new HtmlPipelineContext(null);
htmlContext.setTagFactory(Tags.getHtmlTagProcessorFactory());
// Pipelines
ElementList elements = new ElementList();
ElementHandlerPipeline pdf = new ElementHandlerPipeline(elements, null);
HtmlPipeline html = new HtmlPipeline(htmlContext, pdf);
CssResolverPipeline css = new CssResolverPipeline(cssResolver, html);
// XML Worker
XMLWorker worker = new XMLWorker(css, true);
XMLParser p = new XMLParser(worker);
p.parse(new ByteArrayInputStream(sb.toString().getBytes()));

Now the elements list contains a single element: your table:

return (PdfPTable)elements.get(0);

You can add this table to your PDF document. This is what the result looks like: