Question

I have a Java desktop application that is using iText to generate PDFs from a resultset. The first time you generate a PDF, it works fine. The problem comes when you try to generate a second one. It throws a DocumentException saying that the document is closed. I have tried to find other examples of people having this problem, and I come up with very little, which leads me to believe that I have made a very simple mistake and I cannot find it.

The code below is a snippet of the event handler that calls the report class:

RptPotReport report = new RptPotReport();
try {
    report.rptPot();
} catch (DocumentException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

And here is the code for the report class itself. The error occurs on the second run through this code:

public class RptPotReport {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, DocumentException, SQLException {
        new RptPotReport().rptPot();
    }

    String fileOutput = "Potting Report.pdf";

    public void rptPot() throws DocumentException, IOException {
        File f = new File("Potting Report.pdf");
        if (f.exists()) {
            f.delete();
        }

        Document document = new Document();
        document = pdfSizes.getPdfLetter();
        PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, new FileOutputStream(fileOutput));
        document.open();

        Phrase title = new Phrase();
        title.add(new Chunk("Potting Report"));

        document.add(title); // ******* DocumentException here: "The document has been closed. You can't add any Elements."
        document.close();

        try {
            File pdfFile = new File(fileOutput);
            if (pdfFile.exists()) {
                if (Desktop.isDesktopSupported()) {
                    Desktop.getDesktop().open(pdfFile);
                } else {
                    System.out.println("Awt Desktop is not supported!");
                }
            }
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

EDIT: At someone’s suggestion, I tried calling the RptPotReport from a second thread, but that did not change anything. Looking into it further, the Document class of iText creates a new thread when it’s instantiated. So I’m right back where I started, still stuck.

Answer 1

What does this line do exactly in your application:

document = pdfSizes.getPdfLetter();

Without the code and with your explanation it seems like the line sets the reference of the document variable to the one that you receive from pdfSizes.getPdfLetter(), which is reused between run, thus you no longer have the reference of the new Document() statement.

I tend to think the pdfSizes.getPdfLetter() method is bugged.