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Java creating PDF file

I am currently working at a project which generates contracts. The idea is that I put the data in a form and save it in a simple database.
So long, this was my favorite place to search for good ideas and simple solutions.
Now I am facing another problem and I don't know how I can solve that. I want to create a PDF and replace some placeholders with some data from my form.
One idea was, that I use an existing Word template with some bookmarks and replace them with the data from my form. Maybe there is a way to do that, and I am just too stupid to find it.
Another idea was, that I am using XML. Therefore, I thought I was clever and just converted the Word template to an PDF, so I am able to convert that PDF to an XML. Attached, you find the XML file. But now I need the XSL file - is there an easy way to create the XSL file?
Or maybe there is another simple solution to solve my problem.
In these attachments you find the PDF file, the Word template and the XML:
Thank you a lot :)

Using a template is a good idea - it makes some changes much quicker to make and then deploy. The comments above are focused on conversion, but don't forget you need to merge your data in (population) first.
If you can use Adobe tools, you can have a PDF template and use the Adobe tools to populate. This saves a "conversion" stage.
You mentioned using Word for templates. This means you to run through two stages of processing:
population - docx is a zipped set of XML files - so you can process them with your own code or using a library.
conversion - you need pdf, so you have to convert the docx to pdf. You also have to watch out for fonts at this stage (ie make sure they are available on your host).
The population stage you could do yourself since you are familiar with XML. But it is definitely complicated. The conversion needs to use a tool that is ideal for it. There are a few mentioned in the comments already.
There are some free/os and commercial tools that can do both parts:
docx4j
JOD Reports
Libre Office (using the Java Uno API) (I blogged this once - Java Convert Word to PDF with UNO)
Docmosis (please note I work for Docmosis)
I suggest starting with the simple example you have attached and prove you can both populate and convert that. Then switch to a more complicated example to see if you can do the other things that might be required (eg repeating or conditions or other logic) during the population stage.

API's for printing word documents java

Does anyone know of any easy to learn API's for printing word documents? I'm using Apache POI to create and edit the documents but I can't find any documentation on auto printing each document after it is created. I just need an API that is well documented (again, preferably easy to learn but it does not have to be) and does not require the end user to download any SDK's (also preferably no xml required).

You could check JODConverter to try and convert your Word Document to a printable format.
You could try this
You could (credit-Rob Spoor):
Store your Word file in a temporary file (File.createTempFile())
Use java.awt.Desktop and its PrintFile(File) method
Delete the temp File
But, you should really be more specific in your question and show evidence of personal effort and research.

Creating an editable document via java web application

I am looking for a convenient method to export some data from my database into a form that would be editable afterwards. The perfect scenario would be to export a word document, and perhaps a brutally simple solution would be to generate HTML and copy/paste it into Word.
I've looked at several open source libraries for generating word documents, but they seem a bit too simple or incomplete. I need support for tables and embedded images and control over formatting the fonts, table borders etc. (too much formatting seems to be lost when copying html and pasting into word).
Although Word is the end format, it'd be fine to generate it in any format that word would be able to open and subsequently save as DOCX.
I really haven't been able to find anything about generating ODT files (server side without client installation).
I would just dive into the ASPOSE libraries, but it'll take ages (and significant pain) to get a purchase order sorted out so I need to make sure its the only viable option before taking that route.
I could generate it as an excel file and copy that to word - this is looking like the best option currently.

Putting data in doc template using poi

I need to insert data in some doc template and return it's changed value. I decided to use POI, but if there are other ways to solve my problems I may change the library. I can change the string using Range.replaceText(), but by this way I loose my text formatting, and the text itself turns into plain document with no styles and tables. Are there any ways to replace some characters saving the formatting? I tried RTFTemplate, but it could slightly help me, because it depends on Spring, but I use vaadin in my project.
Thanks in advance

Several years ago I was solving similar problem. The easiest way was to use RTF files as templates, and avoid using any parsing library, because MS Office RTF is not so standatd as you could expect, and any library that tries to "understand" this format tends to loose part of formatting.
So I just opened rtf files as plain text, and searched for my keywords within it. There was a problem when this keywords were splitted into several parts, divided by some non meaningful parts.
I will search my delphi sources and will try to port it to java later this week.

Can Java POI write image to word document?

Anyone know if it is possible?
And got any sample code for this?
Or any other java API that can do this?

The Office 2007 format is based on XML and so can probably be written to using XML tools. However there is this library which claims to be able to write DocX format word documents.
The only other alternative is to use a Java-COM Bridge and use COM to manipulate word. This is probably not a good idea though - I would suggest finding a simpler way.
For example, Word can easily read RTF documents and you can generate .rtf documents from within Java. You don't have to use the Microsoft Word format!

As others have said POI isn't going to allow you to do anything really fancy - plus it doesn't support Office 2007+ formats. Treating MS Word as a component that provides this type of functionality via COM is most likely the best approach here (unless you are running on a non-Windows OS or just can't guarantee that Word will be installed on the machine).
If you do go the COM route, I recommend that you look into the JACOB project. You do need to be somewhat familiar with COM (which has a very steep learning curve), but the library works quite well and is easier than trying to do it in native code with a JNI wrapper.

If you are using docx, you could try docx4j.
See the AddImage sample

Surely:
Take a look at this: http://code.google.com/p/java2word
Word 2004+ is XML based. The above framework gets the image, convert to Base64 representation and adds it to the XML.
When you open your Word Document, there will be your image.
Simple like this:
IDocument myDoc = new Document2004();
myDoc.getBody().addEle("path/myImage.png"));
Java2Word is one API to generate Word Docs using obviously Java code. J2W takes care of all implementation and XML generation behind the scenes.

As far as can be gathered from the project website: no.

POI's HWPF can extract an MS Word document's text and perform simple modifications (basically deleting and inserting text).
AFAIK it can't do much more than that.
Also keep in mind that HWPF works only with the older MS Word (97) format, not the latest ones.

Not sure if Java out of the box can do it directly. But i've read about a component that can pretty much do anything in terms of automating word document generation without having Word. Aspose Words

JasperReports uses this API alternatively to POI, because it supports images:
JExcelAPI
I didn't try it yet and don't know how good/bad it is.