IText

For other similar names, see Itex.

iText

Developer(s)	Bruno Lowagie, Paulo Soares
Stable release	5.0.0 / December 7, 2009 (2009-12-07)
Repository	github.com/itext/itext7
Written in	Java, C#
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Library
License	Affero General Public License
Website	http://itextpdf.com/

iText is a free and open source library for creating and manipulating PDF files in Java. It was written by Bruno Lowagie, Paulo Soares, and others; as of version 5.0.0 it is distributed under the Affero General Public License. Previous versions of iText were distributed under the Mozilla Public License or the LGPL. iText is also available through a commercial license, distributed by iText Software LLC.

iText has been ported to the .NET Framework under the name iTextSharp. iTextSharp is written in C# and it has a separate codebase, but it is synchronized to iText releases.

iText supports PDF's PKI-based signatures, 40-bit and 128-bit encryption, PDF/X, color management, barcodes and a host of other features.

Features

iText is a library to create, read or manipulate documents in hte PDF format. iText can export the same document to multiple formats or multiple instances of the same format. Data can be written to a file or, for example, from a servlet to a web browser.

More recently, it has been extended into a general purpose PDF library, capable of filling out forms, moving pages from one PDF to another, and so on. These extensions are often mutually exclusive. One class allows you to fill in forms, while a different and incompatible class makes it possible to copy pages from one PDF to another.

iText provides support for most of advanced PDF features such as PKI-based signatures, 40-bit and 128-bit encryption, color correction, PDF/X, color management via ICC profiles and barcodes.

History

The library was developed by Bruno Lowagie in the winter of 1998 as in-house project at Ghent University to create PDF documents application for the student administration. The library (formerly known as rugPdf) was a very small and complex library with minimum functionality, such as simply reading and writing PDF files. The developer had to be knowledgeable of PDF syntax, objects, operators and operands to work with the library.

In 1999, Lowagie threw away the rugPdf code and wrote a new library, iText, from scratch. Lowagie created iText as a library that Java developers can use to create PDF documents without knowing PDF syntax, and released it as a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) product on February 14, 2000. In the summer of 2000, Paulo Soares joined the project and is now one of the main developers of new iText features.

iText is embedded in many products and services, including Eclipse BIRT, Jasper Reports, Red Hat JBoss Seam, Windward Reports, and others.

In late 2008, iText became available for commercial license; and in early 2009 iText Software Corp. [1] was formed to be the worldwide licensor of iText products.

Example

The following source code generates a PDF file as a Hello World example.

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import com.lowagie.text.Document;
import com.lowagie.text.Paragraph;
import com.lowagie.text.pdf.PdfWriter;

public class ITextHelloWorld {
   public static void main(String args[]) {
       try {
          Document document = new Document();
          PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream("HelloWorld.pdf"));
          document.open();
          document.add(new Paragraph("Hello World"));
          document.close();
       } catch (Exception e) {
          System.out.println(e);
       }
   }
}

Ports

• iTextSharp is a C# port of iText. The port was originally written by Gerald Henson, but is now maintained by Paulo Soares.
• Pdftk, short for PDF toolkit, is a free, cross-platform, command-line tool for manipulating consisting of a C++ frontend to a "slightly modified" iText that is compiled using gcj. It can split, merge, encrypt, decrypt, watermark, stamp, and rotate PDF pages. It can also fill or retrieve PDF form data.
• iText.NET is a J# port of iText, written by Kazuya Ujihara.

Further reading

• Lowagie, Bruno (8 December 2006). iText in Action (1st ed.). Manning Publications. p. 656. ISBN 1932394796.
• PDF Generation Made Easy by Benoy Jose
• Generate PDF files from Java applications dynamically by Amit Tuli, Staff Software Engineer, IBM

See also

• pdftk
• List of PDF software
• PDFBox - a PDF library (reading, text extraction, manipulation, viewer)

External links

• iText home page
• iText Software LLC (commercial license website)
• iText @ SourceForge
• iTextSharp home page
• iTextSharp @ SourceForge
• iText.NET home page (English)
• iText.NET @ SourceForge
• PDF Toolkit Homepage