Draw Dash and Solid Line to PDF using Java

Andrew Wilson
2 min readOct 20, 2021

In daily work, we may need to draw lines to a PDF document so that the text content inside it can be easily divided into several different parts. Beyond that, drawing lines can also serve the purpose of decoration. This article will show you how to draw dash and solid line using a free Java API.

1# Import the jar dependency of the free Java API (2 Method)
● Download the free API (Free Spire.PDF for Java) and unzip it.Then add the Spire.Pdf.jar file to your project as dependency.

● Directly add the jar dependency to maven project by adding the following configurations to the pom.xml.

<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.e-iceblue</id>
<name>e-iceblue</name>
<url>http://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
</repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
<artifactId>spire.pdf.free</artifactId>
<version>4.3.0</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

2# The relevant code snippet

import com.spire.pdf.*;
import com.spire.pdf.graphics.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class DrawLines {
public static void main(String[] args) {

//Create a new PdfDocument instance and add a new page
PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument();
PdfPageBase page = pdf.getPages().add();

//Set location and size
float x = 150;
float y = 100;
float width = 300;

//Create pens
PdfPen pen = new PdfPen(new PdfRGBColor(Color.red), 3f);
PdfPen pen1 = new PdfPen(new PdfRGBColor(Color.blue), 1f);

//Set dash style and pattern
pen.setDashStyle(PdfDashStyle.Dash);
pen.setDashPattern(new float[]{1, 1, 1});

//Draw lines to the PDF page
page.getCanvas().drawLine(pen, x, y, x + width, y);
page.getCanvas().drawLine(pen1, x, y+50, x + width, y+50);

//Save the document
pdf.saveToFile("output/drawLines.pdf");
}
}

3# A screenshot of the generated PDF document

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Andrew Wilson

Explore C#, Java and Python solutions for processing Word/Excel/PowerPoint/PDF files.