Rendering HTML in Java (without a display device)

Question

I have a Java application, which communicates to a printer and prints documents. Till now I needed only PS/PDF and the printer could handle that. However, now I need to print HTML documents also.

I have seen that it is possible to do it using JavaFX (WebView), but the server on which the application runs does not have a display. Hence, I cannot render it to a display object (in Swing or AWT). What are my options to get a PostScript rendering of a web page which I can then send to the printer?

One solution I had was to use xvfb to emulate a display screen, but that not only seems far fetched, but also is impossible for us to maintain as we use cloud services and our current CI framework does not handle management of system-level binaries.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

You could just use the JavaFX WebEngine class: docs.oracle.com/javase/8/javafx/api/javafx/scene/web/… It allows you to print from it, without the necessity of a UI such as the WebView component. — ManoDestra
– ManoDestra, Commented Feb 23, 2016 at 22:20

MoYapro · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-28 07:24:33Z

1

That iText is what I'm using in one of my projects to generate PDF on a server from an HTML page. doc is the HTML Document and output is an OutputStream.

ITextRenderer renderer = new ITextRenderer();
renderer.setDocument(doc, null);
OutputStream output = ec.getResponseOutputStream();
renderer.layout();
renderer.createPDF(output);

answered Jun 28, 2013 at 7:24

MoYapro

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2 Comments

Rohan Prabhu Over a year ago

Hi! Thanks for replying. How do you set the width/height of the pdf? i.e. how would I specify the printing dimensions for the generated pdf?

MoYapro Over a year ago

I'm not setting up the dimensions. By default it looks to be like the default paper size with is DIN-A4 for me. There is like a lot of documentation on the library so there should be settings for this. You might also be able to set it via CSS properties in your HTML source document

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:50:33Z

0

As you already have the infrastructure for printing PS/PDF, you can "convert" (render) your HTML into PS; see: what is the best way to convert html to postscript? in java

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:50

CommunityBot

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answered Jun 28, 2013 at 7:15

Matthias

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