In certain circumstances, it may be necessary to create a PDF document with rotated text, and this article will share how to achieve this task programmatically using a free Java API.

Installation

The free API used is Free Spire.PDF for Java, and there are 2 methods to install the product.
Method 1: Download and unzip it. Then add the Spire.Pdf.jar file to your project as dependency.

Method 2: Directly add the jar dependency to maven project by adding the following configurations to the pom.xml.

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>com.e-iceblue</id>
        <name>e-iceblue</name>
        <url>https://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
        <artifactId>spire.pdf.free</artifactId>
        <version>5.1.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Sample Code

Free Spire.PDF for Java allows users to draw text rotated at different angles clockwise or counterclockwise. The complete sample code is shown below.

import com.spire.pdf.*;
import com.spire.pdf.graphics.*;

import java.awt.*;

public class drawRotatedText {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        //Create a pdf document
        PdfDocument doc = new PdfDocument();

        //Add a new page
        PdfPageBase page = doc.getPages().add();

        //Set text font, size and color
        PdfFont font = new PdfFont(PdfFontFamily.Helvetica, 10f);
        PdfSolidBrush brush = new PdfSolidBrush(new PdfRGBColor(Color.BLUE));
        PdfSolidBrush brush1 = new PdfSolidBrush(new PdfRGBColor(Color.RED));
        String text = "Draw Rotated text in PDF";

        //Set the text position
        page.getCanvas().drawString(text, font, brush, 20, 30);
        page.getCanvas().drawString(text, font, brush, 20, 200);

        //Save graphics state
        PdfGraphicsState state = page.getCanvas().save();
        Point point1 = new Point(20, 0);

        //Draw the text - transform
        page.getCanvas().translateTransform(20, 30);
        //Rotate 90 degrees clockwise
        page.getCanvas().rotateTransform(90);

        page.getCanvas().drawString(text, font, brush1, point1);
        //Restore graphics
        page.getCanvas().restore(state);
        //Redrawing a new text requires initializing a new state
        PdfGraphicsState state2 = page.getCanvas().save();

        Point point2 = new Point(20, 0);
        page.getCanvas().translateTransform(20, 200);
        //Rotate 90 degrees counterclockwise
        page.getCanvas().rotateTransform(-90);

        page.getCanvas().drawString(text, font, brush, point2);

        //Redrawing a new text requires initializing a new state
        PdfGraphicsState state3 = page.getCanvas().save();

        Point point3 = new Point(20, 0);
        page.getCanvas().translateTransform(20, 0);

        //Rotate 60 degrees clockwise
        page.getCanvas().rotateTransform(60);

        page.getCanvas().drawString(text, font, brush, point3);

        //Redrawing a new text requires initializing a new state
        PdfGraphicsState state4 = page.getCanvas().save();

        Point point4 = new Point(20, 0);
        page.getCanvas().translateTransform(20, 0);

        //Rotate 30 degrees counterclockwise
        page.getCanvas().rotateTransform(-30);

        page.getCanvas().drawString(text, font, brush1, point4);

        //Save the result file
        doc.saveToFile("drawRotatedText.pdf");
    }
}