How to change default font and color for iTextSharp table?

Question

Is there any way, how to change default table's iTextSharp font and cell's color? I have a table, where I can change a font, but that would have to be done on every single cell - which is very unfortunate. Most probably there is a better way, but I haven't found it.

The reason I want to do this change is, that default font does not support Czech characters.

I have following code:

PdfPTable subTable = new PdfPTable(4);
Font bigFont = FontFactory.GetFont("c:\\windows\\fonts\\arial.ttf", BaseFont.IDENTITY_H, 8, Font.NORMAL, BaseColor.RED);
PdfPCell subCell = new PdfPCell(new Phrase("Bělení fáze 1",bigFont));
subCell.BackgroundColor = new BaseColor(196, 231, 234);
subTable.AddCell(subCell);
subTable.AddCell("Test");

First printed cell is going to have defined font - arial, as well as cell's color. Second cell will have all in default.

I also tried following command, but that did not help at all:

subTable.DefaultCell.Phrase = new Phrase() { Font = bigFont };

Thanks for any hints.

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

0

Need to split them into separate chunks that use different Font and add them to a phase and then add them to the PdfPTable as a cell. See here: iTextSharp - Is it possible to set a different font color for the same cell and row?

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered Feb 15 '17 at 16:41

Casey O'Brien

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So it means, there is no way, how to set one font as global for all texts in PDF? – Izmail360 Feb 15 '17 at 16:58
Not that I am aware of or could find – Casey O'Brien Feb 15 '17 at 17:48
OK, thanks a lot. That unfortunate, but with your link, I was able to do that. – Izmail360 Feb 15 '17 at 17:49

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 04 '21 at 14:01

I had the same problem and came accross this old question. While iTextSharp is deprecated and replaced by iText 7, I had to use the old iTextSharp. For anyone in the same position, here is what I ended up with.

Like the original asker, I first tried to achieve it that way, which - in my opinion - would be intuitive:

var table = new PdfPTable(4);  // <- use wrapper class here
table.DefaultCell.Phrase = new Phrase() { Font = myDefaultFont };

which obviously doesn't work. But you can make it work by writing a wrapper class for PdfPTable and overriding its AddCell(string text) like this

public class MyPdfTable : PdfPTable
{
    public new void AddCell(string text)
    {
        Phrase defaultPhrase = DefaultCell.Phrase;
        Phrase phrase = defaultPhrase == null ? new Phrase(text) : new Phrase(text, defaultPhrase.Font);
        base.AddCell(phrase);

        // for some reason iTextSharp sets this to null after AddCell() is called, so we restore it
        DefaultCell.Phrase = defaultPhrase;
    }

One could implement this as an extension method for PdfPTable as well, but I ended up with the above solution since I was working with legacy code. That way the only thing I had to change was the type when newing the table up and not each and every call to AddCell().

Hope it helps anyone.

How to change default font and color for iTextSharp table?

2 Answers2