How to create pdf file and send in mail of spring boot application

Question

I am trying to send email with created pdf document as the attachment, the environment i am working is the REST based java spring boot application,

Actually i know how to send email with the thymeleaf template engine, but how can i create a pdf document in memory, and send it as a attachment, this is the code that i am using for sending email.

Context cxt = new Context();
cxt.setVariable("doctorFullName", doctorFullName);
String message = templateEngine.process(mailTemplate, cxt);
emailService.sendMail(MAIL_FROM, TO_EMAIL,"Subject", "message");

and this this the sendmail() function

 @Override
    public void sendPdfMail(String fromEmail, String recipientMailId, String subject, String body) {
        logger.info("--in the function of sendMail");
        final MimeMessage mimeMessage = this.mailSender.createMimeMessage();
        try {
            final MimeMessageHelper message = new MimeMessageHelper(mimeMessage, true, "UTF-8");
            message.setSubject(subject);
            message.setFrom(fromEmail);
            message.setTo(recipientMailId);
            message.setText(body, true);

            FileSystemResource file = new FileSystemResource("C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\project-name\\logs\\health360-logging.log");
            message.addAttachment(file.getFilename(), file);


            this.mailSender.send(mimeMessage);
            logger.info("--Mail Sent Successfully");
        } catch (MessagingException e) {
            logger.info("--Mail Sent failed ---> " + e.getMessage());
            throw new RuntimeException(e.getMessage());
        }
    }

Actually i need to create a kind of report with 2-3 pages as pdf file, and send in mail.

Also i need to send multiple pdf reports, in the mail, how can i do this, can you friends help me on this, i found something called jasper, is it something related to my environment,

Solution

This is how you can send a mail:

public void email() {
    String smtpHost = "yourhost.com"; //replace this with a valid host
    int smtpPort = 587; //replace this with a valid port

    String sender = "[email protected]"; //replace this with a valid sender email address
    String recipient = "[email protected]"; //replace this with a valid recipient email address
    String content = "dummy content"; //this will be the text of the email
    String subject = "dummy subject"; //this will be the subject of the email

    Properties properties = new Properties();
    properties.put("mail.smtp.host", smtpHost);
    properties.put("mail.smtp.port", smtpPort);     
    Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(properties, null);

    ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = null;

    try {           
        //construct the text body part
        MimeBodyPart textBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
        textBodyPart.setText(content);

        //now write the PDF content to the output stream
        outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        writePdf(outputStream);
        byte[] bytes = outputStream.toByteArray();

        //construct the pdf body part
        DataSource dataSource = new ByteArrayDataSource(bytes, "application/pdf");
        MimeBodyPart pdfBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
        pdfBodyPart.setDataHandler(new DataHandler(dataSource));
        pdfBodyPart.setFileName("test.pdf");

        //construct the mime multi part
        MimeMultipart mimeMultipart = new MimeMultipart();
        mimeMultipart.addBodyPart(textBodyPart);
        mimeMultipart.addBodyPart(pdfBodyPart);

        //create the sender/recipient addresses
        InternetAddress iaSender = new InternetAddress(sender);
        InternetAddress iaRecipient = new InternetAddress(recipient);

        //construct the mime message
        MimeMessage mimeMessage = new MimeMessage(session);
        mimeMessage.setSender(iaSender);
        mimeMessage.setSubject(subject);
        mimeMessage.setRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, iaRecipient);
        mimeMessage.setContent(mimeMultipart);

        //send off the email
        Transport.send(mimeMessage);

        System.out.println("sent from " + sender + 
                ", to " + recipient + 
                "; server = " + smtpHost + ", port = " + smtpPort);         
    } catch(Exception ex) {
        ex.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        //clean off
        if(null != outputStream) {
            try { outputStream.close(); outputStream = null; }
            catch(Exception ex) { }
        }
    }
}

You can see that we create a MimeBodyPart with a DataSource created from bytes that resulted from a method named writePdf():

public void writePdf(OutputStream outputStream) throws Exception {
    Document document = new Document();
    PdfWriter.getInstance(document, outputStream);
    document.open();
    Paragraph paragraph = new Paragraph();
    paragraph.add(new Chunk("hello!"));
    document.add(paragraph);
    document.close();
}

Since we use a ByteOutputStream instead of a FileOutputStream no file is written to disk.

Comments

[learn program]

What is the Document class here, javax.swing.text or org.dom4j or org.thymeleaf.dom or org.w3c.dom

[Bruno Lowagie]

It's a com.itextpdf.text.Document object in iText 5. If you want the most recent version, check out the iText 7 documentation: developers.itextpdf.com/content/itext-7-jump-start-tutorial

[Pawan Tiwari]

iText is paid now.? Is there any alternative of itext apart from jasper

[Eva M]

Yes @PawanTiwari, you can use OpenPdf ! It is a fork of iText and shares many of its concepts and classes.