Develop Reference

Springboot Form convert HTML - > PDF

How in a java project can a HTML form upon submission be converted to PDF and then attached to a email.
Springboot & Thymeleaf are the frameworks in use. The form looks like this:
http://jsfiddle.net/x1hphsvb/5563/
Controller so far:
#org.springframework.stereotype.Controller
#EnableAutoConfiguration
public class Controller {
#RequestMapping("/")
String home() {
return "static/index.html";
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SpringApplication.run(Controller.class, args);
}
}
I have looked at this tutorial and searched for a way to do it with PDF Box without success.
Should I take the data in the back end and insert it into a HTML template or insert the data into a PDF template.
The PDF form should also have the collapsability similar to the HTML.

Regarding the conversion of HTML to PDF
The example you refer to has my name in it (a reference to a package name starting with com.lowagie) which means it's about iText, not about pdfBox. PdfBox doesn't convert HTML to PDF, so that's not an option.
Versions of iText with my name in it, predate iText 5 and should no longer be used in a commercial context. See Can iText 2.1.7 / iTextSharp 4.1.6 or earlier be used commercially?
You also use the tag Flying Saucer. Flying Saucer is a third-party tool to convert HTML to PDF that was built on top of such an old version of iText.
Tips:
If you want to convert HTML to PDF, I suggest that you read Converting HTML to PDF using iText
If you want to use a templating format based on HTML, I suggest that you read How to create template and generate pdf using template and database data iText C#
Regarding PDF forms
You wrote: "The PDF form should also have the collapsability similar to the HTML."
Please check ISO 32000-2 (the PDF 2.0 standard) and you'll discover that PDF forms can't collapse the same way HTML forms collapse. You may have seen PDF documents with similar functionality, but those forms weren't ISO 32000-2 documents; they were XFA forms. XFA stands for the XML Forms Architecture, and that technology was deprecated. You'll hardly find any viewers other than Adobe Reader that support such forms.
When it comes to data entry, PDF has lost and HTML 5 has won. If you've read the answer to the question How to create template and generate pdf using template and database data iText C#, you've noticed that the DITO product chose to create HTML 5 templates for data entry and PDF templates for data presentation.

JavaFx html formatted text in pdf using iText with formatation

Is it possible to set a formatted HTML-Text (Color, Alignment, ...) from a HTMLEditor to an "editable" PDF using iText.
I didn't find anything on the internet.
Thanks.

The easiest way of doing this is (as Amedee suggested) using pdfHTML.
It's an iText7 add-on that converts HTML5 (+CSS3) into pdf syntax.
The code is pretty straightforward:
HtmlConverter.convertToPdf(
"<b>This text should be written in bold.</b>", // html to be converted
new PdfWriter(
new File("C://users/user2002/output.pdf") // destination file
)
);
To learn more, go to https://itextpdf.com/itext7/pdfHTML

I found a Solution in this post using The Flying Saucer: this

How to display Microsoft word document on html page using jsp?

I need to display Microsoft Doc on my web page and then parse the doc for further process.

Use something like: http://poi.apache.org/document/index.html
to parse your word document and extract the data. Then render it as HTML to client browser.
But it sound poor to do that. Better would be to use a format which can directly displayed in the browser like PDF. Then you don't have to parse between the word doc styles and your webpage styles.

You can use Apache Poi to parse the doc file.

Creating a dynamic PDF in Java

This is not a duplicate question. I had searched and tried many options before posting this question.
We have a web page, in which user should be able to input data in text boxes, text areas, images and also Rich Text editors. This data has to be filled in an existing report, like filling the blanks.
I was able to achieve the functionality using Apache FOP when the user input is simple text. But Apache FOP doesn't work if the user input is Rich Text(html format). FOP will not render html, and it just pushes the html code(ex: <strong> XYZ /strong>) into the pdf.
I tried using iText, but the setback here is that even though iText supports rendering of html to pdf, it is not able to place the images, that are included in <img> tags, in the pdf file.
I can try to create a pdf using iText api block by block, but the problem is rich text data entered by the user can not be embedded between the code since building pdf block by block and html to pdf can not be done together in iText. Or at least that is what I think from my experience.
Is there any other way to create a pdf file from java with images, rich text rendering as it is, headers and footers?

iText provides the capability to convert HTML Data to Pdf. Below is the snippet to do it :
Lets assume the html data is available as Input Stream (If its a String then we can convert it to InputStream using Apache Commons - IOUtils)
InputStream htmlData; // Html Data that needs to converted to Pdf
ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
Document document = new Document();
PdfWriter pdfWriter = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, outputStream);
document.open();
// convert the HTML with the built-in convenience method
XMLWorkerHelper.getInstance().parseXHtml(pdfWriter, document, htmlData);
document.close();
// outputStream now has the required pdf data

I am working as Social Media Developer for Aspose and to add rich text to a form field in PDF file, you can try our Aspose.Pdf for Java API. Check the following sample code:
// Open a PDF document
com.aspose.pdf.Document pdfDocument = new com.aspose.pdf.Document("c:\\data\\input.pdf");
//Find Rich TextBox field using Field Name
RichTextBoxField textBoxField1 = (RichTextBoxField)pdfDocument.getForm().get("textbox1");
//Set the field value
textBoxField1.setValue("<strong> XYZ </strong>");
// Save the modified PDF
pdfDocument.save("c:\\data\\output2.pdf");

I am not trying to market or promote this product. This api actually solved our problem so thought of mentioning it as it might help fellow developers. please let me know if this is against your policy.
I finally realized that the solution for my requirement can not be achieved with either FOP, iText, Aspose, Flying Saucer, JODConverter.
I found a paid api Sferyx. This api allows to render a very complex html to pdf almost preserving the original style. It also renders the images included in the html. We are still exploring this api and will post what other features this api provides.

How to use Freemarker to convert a XML Word document to a DOC?

I'm trying to use Freemarker to convert an XML Word document to a standard DOC. For example:
I generate a Word document (A.doc) and then save it as XML Word document (A.xml).
On Freemarker, I import A.xml and export it as 2003 Word (B.doc).
In POI, I import the converted DOC (B.doc). (POI can't read XML docs.)
The problem is: the converted document isn't really a DOC, it's an XML doc,
so POI fails to open it.
How to use Freemarker generate a real DOC, not a XML word document?
I'm using Linux.

Your approach probably won't work because FreeMarker is designed for generating text output. Classic Word DOC files are not very "textual", so I think FreeMarker is not the right tool for your task.
(Side note: but RTF might work)