PdfPcell empty output of Arabic strings

Question

I have that part of code:

//Staff
// Title font
BaseFont titleBf = null;
try {
titleBf = BaseFont.createFont(BaseFont.TIMES_ROMAN,BaseFont.CP1252, BaseFont.EMBEDDED);
} catch (IOException e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
com.itextpdf.text.Font titleFont = new com.itextpdf.text.Font(titleBf,24);
titleFont.setColor(new BaseColor(0, 0, 204));
/*
 * Pdf creation
*/
Document document = new Document();
PdfWriter.getInstance(document,new FileOutputStream(fc.getSelectedFile() + ".pdf"));
document.open();

/*
* Title
*/
Paragraph p = new Paragraph("مرحبا بكم",titleFont);
p.setSpacingAfter(20);
p.setAlignment(1); // Center
document.add(p);
//Staff
document.close();

The output was empty. Even when I tried to add simple pdfpcell, I got same result, here is the way:

com.itextpdf.text.Font fontNormal = FontFactory.getFont(
                ("arialuni.ttf"), BaseFont.CP1252, BaseFont.EMBEDDED,
                8, com.itextpdf.text.Font.NORMAL);

Chunk chunkArabic = new Chunk("مرحبا العالم", fontNormal);
infoTab.addCell(new PdfPCell(new Phrase(chunkArabic)));
document.add(infoTab);

Answer 1

Different problems may be at play.

1. Encoding: You are putting Arabic text in your source code. If you save your Java file using the wrong encoding, that text will become corrupt. If you compile your Java file using the wrong encoding, that text will become corrupt. And so on. I hope you get the idea. Store literal text like this: "\u0644\u0648\u0631\u0627\u0646\u0633 \u0627\u0644\u0639\u0631\u0628" to avoid problems like this.
2. As documented in Chapter 11 of my book, right-to-left writing and Arabic ligatures are only supported in the context of PdfPCell and ColumnText. I see that you're using PdfPCell, but I don't see you using cell.setRunDirection(PdfWriter.RUN_DIRECTION_RTL); anywhere. That's wrong.
3. You are using an object fontNormal, but you're not telling us which font you're actually using. For instance: if you're using the standard Type1 font Helvetica, no text will show up, because Helvetica doesn't know how to render Arabic text.

Amendment: You've now updated your question, showing that you're using "arialuni.ttf". However, you are using the wrong encoding: CP1252 is the encoding for the Latin Alphabet. You should use BaseFont.IDENTITY_H.

Update: looking at the update of your question as well as the extra comment, I see two major errors.

1. You are assuming that the name of the font is "arialuni.ttf". That's the font file, but not the font name. Also: you are asking the FontFactory for this font, but did you tell the FontFactory where to look for fonts? Are you sure the FontFactory can locate c:/windows/fonts/ or whatever directory the file arialuni.ttf is stored.
2. You are declaring a font, but you're not using it: Paragraph p = new Paragraph("\u062D\u064A\u0633\u0648"); creates a Paragraph using the default font.

This is code that works:

BaseFont bf = BaseFont.createFont(
    "c://windows/fonts/arialuni.ttf", BaseFont.IDENTITY_H, BaseFont.EMBEDDED);
Font font = new Font(bf, 8);
PdfPTable table = new PdfPTable(1);
PdfPCell  cell = new PdfPCell(new Phrase("\u062D\u064A\u0633\u0648", font));
cell.setRunDirection(PdfWriter.RUN_DIRECTION_RTL);
table.addCell(cell);
document.add(table);

The result looks like this (zoomed in):