How To Set PDF File Display In Servlet

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In this article we will write a simple program which will write content to a PDF file. Example of writing data into PDF using Servlet. Create a Servlet called PDFDemo.

package javabeat.net.servlets;

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

public class PDFDemo extends HttpServlet{
	public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
			   throws IOException {
			  PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
			  response.setContentType("application/pdf");
			  String filepath = "/home/jsp.pdf";
			  response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline; filename=’jsp.pdf'");
			  FileOutputStream fileout = new FileOutputStream(filepath);
			  fileout.close();
			  out.close();
	}

}

Explanation:

Content-Disposition in response header contains inline disposition type and file name attributes.
inline is disposition type. If it is marked “inline” then it should be automatically displayed when the message is displayed.
filename is name of the file used when creating the file.
ContentType is used to display MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) type. MIME type describes contents of various files.
PrintWriter object is used to display the result.
FileOutputStream is an output stream which is used to write data to file or file descriptor.

Execute the above program, right mouse click on the class PDFDemo and select Run>Run As, a pdf file with the name jsp.pdf would be created at the specified path in our case it is /home/jsp.pdf.

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