Seam now includes an optional component set for generating documents using iText. The primary focus of Seam's iText document support is for the generation of PDF doucuments, but Seam also offers basic support for RTF document generation.
iText support is provided by jboss-seam-pdf.jar. This JAR contains the iText JSF controls, which are used to construct views that can render to PDF, and the DocumentStore component, which serves the rendered documents to the user. To include PDF support in your application, included jboss-seam-pdf.jar in your WEB-INF/lib directory along with the iText JAR file. There is no further configuration needed to use Seam's iText support.
The Seam iText module requires the use of Facelets as the view technology. Future versions of the library may also support the use of JSP. Additionally, it requires the use of the seam-ui package.
The examples/pdf project contains an example of the PDF support in action. It demonstrates proper deployment packaging, and it contains a number examples that demonstrate the key PDF generation features current supported.
Documents are generated by facelets documents using tags in the http://jboss.com/products/seam/pdf namespace. Documents should always have the document tag at the root of the document. The document tag prepares Seam to generate a document into the DocumentStore and renders an HTML redirect to that stored content. The following is a a small PDF document consisting only a single line of text:
<p:document xmlns:p="http://jboss.com/products/seam/pdf"> A very tiny PDF </p:document>
Documents should be composed entirely using Seam document components. Controls meant for HTML rendering are generally not supported. However, pure control structures can be used. The following document uses the ui:repeat tag to to display a list of values retrieved from a Seam component.
<p:document xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets" xmlns:p="http://jboss.com/products/seam/pdf"> <p:list> <ui:repeat value="#{lists.numbers}" var="item"> <p:listItem><p:font style="bold">#{item}</p:font>: This is some information...</p:listItem> </ui:repeat> </p:list> </p:document>
The p:document tag supports the following attributes:
The type of the document to be produced. Valid values are PDF, RTF and HTML modes. Seam defaults to PDF generation, and many of the features only work correctly when generating PDF documents.
The size of the page to be generate. The most commonly used values would be LETTER and A4. A full list of supported pages sizes can be found in com.lowagie.text.PageSize class.
The left, right, top and bottom margin values.
Indicates that margin settings should be reversed an alternating pages.
Document metadata is also set as attributes of the document tag. The following metadata fields are supported:
The p:header and p:footer components provide the ability to place header and footer text on each page of a generated document, with the exception of the first page. Header and footer declarations should appear near the top of a document.
The alignment of the header/footer box section. (see Section 19.8.2, “Alignment Values” for alignment values)
The background color of the header/footer box. (see Section 19.8.1, “Color Values” for color values)
The border color of the header/footer box. Individual border sides can be set using borderColorLeft, borderColorRight, borderColorTop and borderColorBottom.(see Section 19.8.1, “Color Values” for color values)
The width of the border. Inidvidual border sides can be specified using borderWidthLeft, borderWidthRight, borderWidthTop and borderWidthBottom.
If the generated document follows a book/article structure, the p:chapter and p:section tags can be used to provide the necessary structure. Sections can only be used inside of chapters, but they may be nested arbitrarily deep.
The chapter number. Every chapter should be assigned a chapter number.
The depth of numbering for section. All sections are numbered relative to their surrounding chapter/sections. The fourth section of of the first section of chapter three would be section 3.1.4, if displayed at the default number depth of three. To omit the chapter number, a number depth of 2 should be used. In that case, the section number would be displayed as 1.4.
List structures can be displayed using the p:list and p:listItem tags. Lists may contain arbitrarily-nested sublists. List items may not be used outside of a list.
p:list supports the following attributes:
The ordering/bulleting style of list. One of: NUMBERED, LETTERED, GREEK, ROMAN, ZAPFDINGBATS, ZAPFDINGBATS_NUMBER. If no style is given, the list items are bulleted.
For bulleted lists, specifies the bullet symbol.
The indentation level of the list.
For list styles using letters, indicates whether the letters should be lower case.
For ZAPFDINGBATS, indicates the character code of the bullet character.
For ZAPFDINGBATS_NUMBER, indicates the numbering style.
p:listItem supports the following attributes:
The alignment of the list item. (See Section 19.8.2, “Alignment Values” for possible values)
The left indentation amount.
The right indentation amount.
Overrides the default list symbol for this list item.
Table structures can be created using the p:table and p:cell tags. Unlike many table structures, there is no explicit row declaration. If a table has 3 columns, then every 3 cells will automatically form a row.
p:table supports the following attributes.
The number of columns (cells) that make up a table row.
The relative widths of each column. There should be one value for each column. For example: widths="2 1 1" would indicate that there are 3 columns and the first column should be twice the size of the second and third column.
The initial number of rows which are considered to be headers or footer rows and should be repeated if the table spans multiple pages.
The number of rows that are considered to be footer rows. This value is subtracted from the headerRows value. If document has 2 rows which make up the header and one row that makes up the footer, headerRows should be set to 3 and footerRows should be set to 1
The percentage of the page width that the table spans.
The horizontal alignment of the table. (See Section 19.8.2, “Alignment Values” for possible values)
The blank space to be inserted before the element.
The blank space to be inserted after the element.
p:cell supports the following attributes.
Cells can span more than one column by declaring a colspan greater than 1. Tables do not have the ability to span across multiple rows.
The horizontal alignment of the cell. (see Section 19.8.2, “Alignment Values” for possible values)
The vertical alignment of the cell. (see Section 19.8.2, “Alignment Values” for possible values)
Padding on a given side can also be specified using paddingLeft, paddingRight, paddingTop and paddingBottom.
The blank space to be inserted before the element.
The blank space to be inserted after the element.
p:image inserts an image into the document.
The location of the image resource to be included. Resources should be relative to the document root of the web application.
The rotation of the image in degrees.
The height of the image.
The width of the image.
The alignment of the image. (see Section 19.8.2, “Alignment Values” for possible values)
The blank space to be inserted before the element.
The blank space to be inserted after the element.
p:anchor defines clickable links from a document. It supports the following attributes:
The name of an in-document anchor destination.
The destination the link refers to. Links to other points in the document should begin with a "#". For example, "#link1" to refer to an anchor postion with a name of link1. Links may also be a full URL to point to a resource outside of the document.
Seam documents do not yet support a full color specification. Currently, only named colors are supported. They are: white, gray, lightgray, darkgray, black, red, pink, yellow, green, magenta, cyan and blue.