The table width must be greater than zero exception when using nested tables

Question

I am trying to use nested tables with iText. I get a DocumentException:

The table width must be greater than zero.

The outer table has 16 columns. I call a method that passes in the outer table. This method adds two inner tables. If I add either one of the inner tables it works fine. If I add the second inner table I get the exception which is thrown form the PdfPTable.writeSelectedRows method.

private final float[] columnWidths = {183, 31, 88, 49, 35, 25, 35, 35, 35, 32, 32, 33, 35, 60, 46, 26 };      

public void buildPdfReport(ByteArrayOutputStream out) {
     Document document;
     PdfWriter pdfWriter;   

     document= new Document(PageSize.LETTER.rotate(), 2, 2, 5, 2);
     pdfWriter = PdfWriter.getInstance(document, out);
     document.open();

     PdfPTable outerTable = new PdfPTable(columnWidths);
     table.setTotalWidth(770F);
     table.setLockedWidth(true);
     buildNestedTables(table);

     document.add(outerTable);
     document.newPage();
     document.close();
     pdfWriter.close();

}

private void buildNestedTables(PdfPTable outerTable) {
     PdfPTable innerTable1 = new PdfPTable(1);
     PdfPTable innerTable2 = new PdfPtable(2);
     PdfPCell cell;

     innerTable1.addCell("Cell 1");
     innerTable1.addCell("Cell 2");
     outerTable.addCell(innerTable1);

     innerTable2.addCell("Cell 3");
     innerTable2.addCell("Cell 4");
     outerTable.addCell(innerTable2);

     cell = new PdfPCell("");
     cell.setColspan(14);
     outerTable.addCell(cell);
}

I'm not sure what I am missing.

Thank you for any help,

Greg

Answer 1

The problem you're reporting can't be reproduced. I have copy/pasted your code into a standalone example NestedTables and the resulting PDF looks OK: nested_tables.pdf

I see two possible causes for your problem:

1. You are using an obsolete or (even worse) unofficial version of iText (who knows what is inside such an unofficial version).
2. Your actual code is as sloppy as the code snippet you shared (but in that case you wouldn't even be able to compile it).

These are things that are impossible in your snippet:

PdfPTable outerTable = new PdfPTable(columnWidths);
table.setTotalWidth(770F);

You define a variable named outerTable and in the next line you set the width for a variable named table (that isn't defined anywhere in your code).

You use:

 cell = new PdfPCell("");

But there is no PdfPCell constructor that accepts a String value.

Please download the standalone example and check if it works for you. It works for me; if it doesn't work for you, you should upgrade your iText version.