Are there any Java PDF creation alternatives to iText?

Question

I am trying to render about 100,000 - 80 column records through FOP and it tanks pretty much everytime (OutOfMemoryException). I know iText could handle that kind of load but I can't use it because of the LGPL license. Are there any alternative Java libraries to iText that can handle rendering a high volume of data to PDF?

Solution 1

There are commercial PDF generating libraries, such as BFO and ElegantJ. If you need open source, there is PDFBox, but I don't know if it is production ready.

Solution 2

Have a look at RenderX for an alternative to FOP.

It costs money, but if you have an existing solution in place that might be the cheapest.

Solution 3

Have you tried to increase the amount of heap available to the JVM? OUtOfMemory while processing huge amounts of data usually calls for more memory.

Solution 4

Qoppa and Crionics both offer commercial tools to create PDFs.

Solution 5

There are some alternatives

http://www.ulimatbach.de/java/PDF-Bibliotheken.html

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Comments

[Mike C.]

Thanks for the suggestions I'll take a look at them.

[xmedeko]

PdfBox is active, just the home page is pdfbox.apache.org now.

[Bob Cross]

we deploy with pdfbox - it has been working very nicely.

[iandisme]

The Aspose Java PDF library is hot garbage. It doesn't even support HTML formatting.

[vsingh]

Using pdfBox. works pretty well

[Don Cheadle]

Apache PdfBox, as of this writing, is pretty stellar and completely free-to-use.

[vikingsteve]

Never had a good experience with any Aspose products - plus, they cost money.

[Davor Hrg]

PdfBox is active and looking great. I have some form filling in PDF that works like a charm.