Print byte[] to PDF using PDFBox

Question

I have a question about writing image to PDF using PDFBox.

My requirement is very simple: I get an image from a web service using Spring RestTemplate, I store it in a byte[] variable, but I need to draw the image into a PDF document.

I know that the following is provided:

final byte[] image = this.restTemplate.getForObject(
        this.imagesUrl + cableReference + this.format,
        byte[].class
);

JPEGFactory.createFromStream() for JPEG format, CCITTFactory.createFromFile() for TIFF images, LosslessFactory.createFromImage() if starting with buffered images. But I don't know what to use, as the only information I know about those images is that they are in THUMBNAIL format and I don't know how to convert from byte[] to those formats.

Thanks a lot for any help.

Answer 1

(This applies to version 2.0, not to 1.8)

I don't know what you mean with THUMBNAIL format, but give this a try:

    final byte[] image = ... // your code
    ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(image);
    BufferedImage bim = ImageIO.read(bais);
    PDImageXObject pdImage = LosslessFactory.createFromImage(doc, bim);

It might be possible to create a more advanced solution by using

PDImageXObject.createFromFileByContent()

but this one uses a file and not a stream, so it would be slower (but produce the best possible image type).

To add this image to your PDF, use this code:

    PDDocument doc = new PDDocument();
    try
    {
        PDPage page = new PDPage();
        doc.addPage(page);

        PDPageContentStream contents = new PDPageContentStream(doc, page);

        // draw the image at full size at (x=20, y=20)
        contents.drawImage(pdImage, 20, 20);

        // to draw the image at half size at (x=20, y=20) use
        // contents.drawImage(pdImage, 20, 20, pdImage.getWidth() / 2, pdImage.getHeight() / 2);

        contents.close();
        doc.save(pdfPath);
    }
    finally
    {
        doc.close();
    }