converting html to pdf

I have an assignment to convert html to pdf. The html file may contain images, heading, text, tables etc. The output pdf file should look like the original pdf.

I have googled and found out some links. While i am investigating those links, can some one suggest what would be good APIs that would help me to do this conversion.

Any help will be appreciated.

If it's CSS-styled XHTML, then the FlyingSaucer library can do this.

You could also try OpenOffice's Java API (I think OO can open HTML files), or a library like JODCOnverter that uses OO in server mode.

Hi Ulf,
Thanks for your quick responses. I have been able to generate PFDs from HTML using FlyingSaucer. The PDFs generate are pretty neat.

Hi Ulf,
I am trying to do pdf generation from html, but only first page of pdf is generated. The entire html is not converted to pdf. Let me know what should be done to rectify the problem. I spent time looking at the code but cannot find any clue.

HTML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>

<title>Developer's Guide to Flying Saucer</title>
  <link	 href="base.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
</head>

<h1>Developer's Guide to Flying Saucer</h1>

<div>
<h2><a ></a>Getting control of loading data - <code>UserAgentCallback</code></h2>
<p>  Loading of documents, stylesheets and images is under the control of the user agent (i.e. your code).
</p>
<p>  To get control of these things you need to implement the <code>org.xhtmlrenderer.extend.UserAgentCallback</code> interface
and pass it to the constructor of one of the panels or your extension of a panel.
</p>
<p>  By default, the panels use <code>org.xhtmlrenderer.swing.NaiveUserAgent</code> which just loads everything.
If you wish, you may of course extend this class and override the stuff that you care about.
</p>
<p>To build a general web-browser, you will need to make an implementation that converts crappy html to good xml.
Then you should probably make a <code>NamespaceHandler</code> (see below) to turn html styling attributes into css element styles.
Alternatively, the document could first be converted to good css-styled xhtml.
</p>
</div>
  
<div>
<h2><a ></a>Handling different document types - <code>NamespaceHandler</code></h2>
<p>  The Flying Saucer xhtmlrenderer in its basic form just renders xml styled with css.
The stylesheet is obtained from an <?xml-stylesheet?> processing-instruction.
There is no inherent knowledge of the document type, other than what is known about xml as such.
</p>
<p>Knowledge about a document type is provided through the NamespaceHandler interface.
An implementation of this interface may be provided in the method <code>public void setDocument(Document doc, URL url, NamespaceHandler nsh)</code>
</p>
<p>The <code>BasicPanel</code> will by default use the <code>org.xhtmlrenderer.swing.NoNamespaceHandler</code> implementation.
</p>
<p>The <code>XHTMLPanel</code> will by default use the <code>org.xhtmlrenderer.simple.extend.XhtmlNamespaceHandler</code> implementation.
</p>
<p>The provided <code>NamespaceHandler</code> will be able to provide a JComponent to replace any element.
At the time of this writing the element needs to have a display property set to "inline-block" for this to work.
Anyway, with the right <code>NamespaceHandler</code> and <code>UserAgentCallback</code>, you could do just about anything,
like, for example, make a XUL implementation on top of Flying Saucer.
</p>
</div>

<h2><a ></a>Receiving Document Events<br>
</h2>
<p>if you want to know when the document is loaded you'll need to implement the
    <code>org.xhtmlrenderer.event.DocumentListener </code>interface, which currently
    only has one method: <code>documentLoaded()</code><br>
</p>

<h2><a ></a>Using the FSScrollPane</h2>

<p>Since an XHTMLPanel is a JComponent you can put it inside of a JScrollPane to implement scrolling. It behaves just as a JTable or JList would.  However, Flying Saucer provides the FSScrollPane to implement more intelligent scrolling such as moving down a line when you press the down arrow key and moving down by
a whole page when you hit the page down key.  For more information see the javadocs for FSScrollPane.
</p>

</div>
</body>
</html>

CSS

/* Generated by CaScadeS, a stylesheet editor for Mozilla Composer */

#fs h1, #fs h2 { border-style: none none solid;
    border-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
    border-width: 0px;
    background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll left top;
    -moz-background-clip: initial;
    -moz-background-origin: initial;
    -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;
    margin-top: 30px;
    padding-bottom: 3px;
    font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
    font-weight: normal;
    padding-top: 15px;
    padding-left: 15px;
    color: rgb(23, 119, 164);
    word-spacing: normal;
    letter-spacing: normal;
    font-style: italic;
    }

body, #fs { background: rgb(255, 255, 255) none repeat scroll 0% 50%;
    -moz-background-clip: initial;
    -moz-background-origin: initial;
    -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;
    margin-right: 4px;
    margin-left: 20px;
    font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
    }

/* the menu box itself */
  #menu {
    padding: 0px 0px;
    float: right;
	border: 0px solid blue;
	font-size: 90%;
	margin: 0px;
	margin-left: 5px;
    }

/* 
		#menu ul is the sub menu
		#menu ul li is the sub menu items
	*/

/* the top menu of each section */
	#menu li {
		list-style-type: none;
		border: 0px solid blue;
		background-color: #BFE4FF;
		color: #6096BF;
		margin-top: 10px;
		padding-top: 5px;
	}
	
	#menu li b {
		border: 0px solid red;
		padding-left: 10px;
	}
	li#newsfeed img {
		margin-left: 20px;
	}
	li#newsfeed a {
		color: #6096BF;
		font-weight: bold;
		text-decoration: none;
	}
	li#newsfeed a:hover {
		text-decoration: underline;
	}

/* the box around each section */
	#menu ul {
		margin-top: 3px;
		border: 0px solid red;
		background-color: #E6F4FF;
	}
	
	/* the items in each section */
	#menu ul li {
		border: 0px solid gray;
		text-align: right;
		padding: 1px 2px;
		margin: 0px;
		padding-right: 6px;
		background-color: #E6F4FF;
	}
	#menu ul li a {
		border: 0px dashed blue;
		color: black;
		text-decoration: none;
	}
	#menu ul li a:hover {
		text-decoration: underline;
	}
	#menu ul li a:hover {
		text-decoration: underline;
	}
	/*
  #menu li { border: 0px none rgb(0, 0, 0);
    margin: 0px;
    padding: 0px;
    font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
    color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
    font-size: medium;
    vertical-align: top;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-align: right;
    }

#menu li b { display: block;
    padding-top: 3px;
    padding-bottom: 3px;
    background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
    margin-top: 10px;
    padding-right: 10px;
	padding-left: 0px;
	margin-right: 0px;
	border: 1px solid red;
    }

#menu li li { font-style: normal;
    text-align: left;
    text-decoration: none;
    color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
    background-color: rgb(51, 102, 255);
    display: list-item;
    padding-left: 0pt;
    margin-left: 0pt;
	border: 1px solid green;
    }

#menu a { padding: 3px 6px;
    display: block;
    color: rgb(204, 102, 0) ! important;
    background-color: rgb(255, 244, 175);
	border: 1px solid gray;
	padding-left: 10px;
	margin-left: 10px;
	margin: 0px;
	padding: 0px;
    }

#menu a:hover { background-color: rgb(192, 192, 192);
    }
*/
  code { font-weight: bold;
    color: rgb(153, 153, 0);
    }

pre { border: 1px dotted rgb(255, 204, 0);
    margin: 10px;
    padding: 6px;
    background: rgb(255, 255, 204) none repeat scroll 0% 50%;
    -moz-background-clip: initial;
    -moz-background-origin: initial;
    -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;
    }

.invalid { text-decoration: line-through;
    }