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Dries Horions edited this page Feb 13, 2026 · 29 revisions

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Welcome to the Boxable library documentation!

What is Boxable?

Boxable is a high-level Java library built on top of Apache PDFBox that makes it easy to create tables in PDF documents. It provides a simple API for generating professional-looking tables with rich formatting options.

Key Features

  • Easy table creation - Simple API for building tables programmatically
  • Rich HTML formatting - Support for HTML tags including <b>, <i>, <u>, <s>, <h1>-<h6>, <sup>, <sub>, <ul>, <ol>, <li>, and more
  • Data import - Import data from CSV files or Java Lists
  • Multi-page support - Tables automatically span multiple pages with repeating headers
  • Advanced styling - Cell colors, borders, alignment, transparency, images, and more
  • Nested tables - Create complex layouts with tables inside cells
  • Fixed-height rows - Auto-fit text in constrained spaces
  • Rotated text - 90-degree rotation for vertical labels

Quick Start

Maven Dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.dhorions</groupId>
    <artifactId>boxable</artifactId>
    <version>1.8.2</version>
</dependency>

Simple Example

// Initialize PDF document
PDDocument document = new PDDocument();
PDPage page = new PDPage();
document.addPage(page);

// Create table
float margin = 50;
float yStart = page.getMediaBox().getHeight() - margin;
float tableWidth = page.getMediaBox().getWidth() - (2 * margin);
float bottomMargin = 70;

BaseTable table = new BaseTable(yStart, yStart, bottomMargin, 
                                tableWidth, margin, document, page, 
                                true, true);

// Add rows
Row<PDPage> headerRow = table.createRow(20f);
headerRow.createCell(50, "Name");
headerRow.createCell(50, "Value");

Row<PDPage> dataRow = table.createRow(15f);
dataRow.createCell(50, "Item 1");
dataRow.createCell(50, "Value 1");

// Draw and save
table.draw();
document.save("output.pdf");
document.close();

Documentation Structure

Runnable Tutorials

The library includes 12 runnable tutorials that demonstrate all features:

  1. Basic Table - Simple table creation
  2. HTML Formatting - Text formatting with HTML
  3. Colors and Transparency - Color management
  4. Alignment - Text alignment options
  5. Images - Images in cells
  6. Borders and Styling - Border customization
  7. Header Rows - Repeating headers
  8. Data Import - CSV and List imports
  9. Multi-Page Tables - Page spanning
  10. Nested Tables - Tables within cells
  11. Fixed Height Rows - Auto-fit text
  12. Advanced Features - Rotated text, colspan

Run all tutorials:

mvn test -Dtest=TutorialRunner

Community and Support

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.

Special thanks to :

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Copyright 2026

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

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