HTML to PDF Conversion - "Can't load the XML resource" Error

Question

I'm trying to convert strict XHTML to PDF using flying saucer and iText. I've validated XHTML and path of input and output file are precise. I have no goddamn clue why this is throwing an exception on renderer.setDocument("file:/c:/example/First.html") line.

My Class:

package flyingsaucerpdf;
    import java.io.*;
    import org.xhtmlrenderer.pdf.ITextRenderer;
    import com.lowagie.text.DocumentException;

    public class FirstDoc {
     public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException, DocumentException
         {
                 String outputFile = "results/firstdoc.pdf";
                 OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream(outputFile);
                 ITextRenderer renderer = new ITextRenderer();
             try
             {
                 renderer.setDocument("file:/c:/example/First.html");
             }
             catch( Exception e )
             {
                 System.out.println("Me not create file. Error:"+e.getMessage());
             }
             renderer.layout();
             renderer.createPDF(os);

             os.close();
         }

    }

My Exception:

ERROR: ''Me not create file. Error:Can't load the XML resource (using TRaX transformer). java.lang.NullPointerException

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException at org.xhtmlrenderer.layout.BoxBuilder.createRootBox(BoxBuilder.java:81) at org.xhtmlrenderer.pdf.ITextRenderer.layout(ITextRenderer.java:152) at flyingsaucerpdf.FirstDoc.main(FirstDoc.java:31)

My XHTML:

<?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>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Insert title here</title>
<style type="text/css"> b { color: green; } </style>
</head>
<body>
<p>
<b>Greetings Earthlings!</b>
We've come for your Java.
</p>
</body>
</html>

Any help?

Any chance you could upload your correct xhtml? I am running into the same issue — Surreal, Nov 16 '18 at 01:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 22 '12 at 13:42

Is your virtual machine online? It may be possible that the renderer/parser tries to load the linked resources like the

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd

that are needed to ensure that the xml (xhtml) you provide is correct.

In a Servlet I do the following that seems to work (some online resources are made available within my own filesystem because the server has no internet connection):

final DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder();
builder.setEntityResolver(new EntityResolver() {
  @Override
  public InputSource resolveEntity(String publicId, String systemId)
      throws SAXException, IOException {
    if (systemId.contains("xhtml1-transitional.dtd")) {
      return new InputSource(new FileReader(realPath + "/WEB-INF/dtd/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"));
    } else if (systemId.contains("xhtml-lat1.ent")) {
      return new InputSource(new FileReader(realPath + "/WEB-INF/dtd/xhtml-lat1.ent"));
    } else if (systemId.contains("xhtml-symbol.ent")) {
      return new InputSource(new FileReader(realPath + "/WEB-INF/dtd/xhtml-symbol.ent"));
    } else if (systemId.contains("xhtml-special.ent")) {
      return new InputSource(new FileReader(realPath + "/WEB-INF/dtd/xhtml-special.ent"));
    } else {
      return null;
    }
  }
});
final ByteArrayInputStream inputStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(html.getBytes("UTF-8"));
final Document doc = builder.parse(inputStream);
inputStream.close();
final ITextRenderer renderer = new ITextRenderer(26f * 4f / 3f, 26);
renderer.setDocument(doc, request.getScheme() + "://" + request.getServerName() + ":" + request.getServerPort());
renderer.layout();

This basically sets up a DocumentBuilder and then parses my document (which is in String format and represented by the variable html)

Although I fixed that issue (it WAS actually an invalid XHTML), your approach is more subtle and error proof. Thanks. — srijan, May 22 '12 at 20:36

HTML to PDF Conversion - "Can't load the XML resource" Error

1 Answers1