Why doesn't jasper report throw a JRFontNotFoundException if font for PDF is missing?

Question

I read

and I expected that Jasper Reports throws a JRFontNotFoundException if a font is not installed on the machine.

But my application doesn't throw a JRFontNotFoundException, although I have not installed the used font "Helvetica" on any (Jaspersoft Studios, JasperReports, Adobe Acrobat Reader) machine.

JRXML:

<parameter name="timestamp" class="java.util.Date"/>
[...]
<textField>
    <reportElement x="0" y="0" width="50" height="16" uuid="0007846a-26f1-457a-a198-67a2f7c8417c">
        <property name="local_mesure_unitwidth" value="pixel"/>
        <property name="com.jaspersoft.studio.unit.width" value="px"/>
        <property name="local_mesure_unitx" value="pixel"/>
        <property name="com.jaspersoft.studio.unit.x" value="px"/>
        <property name="local_mesure_unity" value="pixel"/>
        <property name="com.jaspersoft.studio.unit.y" value="px"/>
        <property name="local_mesure_unitheight" value="pixel"/>
        <property name="com.jaspersoft.studio.unit.height" value="px"/>
    </reportElement>
    <box padding="2"/>
    <textElement textAlignment="Left" verticalAlignment="Top">
        <font size="8" pdfFontName="Helvetica" pdfEncoding="Cp1250" isPdfEmbedded="true"/>
    </textElement>
    <textFieldExpression><![CDATA[DATEFORMAT($P{timestamp},"dd.MM HH:mm")]]></textFieldExpression>
</textField>

Maven dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sf.jasperreports</groupId>
    <artifactId>jasperreports</artifactId>
    <version>5.6.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>net.sf.jasperreports</groupId>
    <artifactId>jasperreports-functions</artifactId>
    <version>5.6.0</version>
</dependency>

Java:

private byte[] createPdf() {

    try {
        InputStream is = getClass().getResourceAsStream("MyReport.jasper");
        JasperReport jasperReport = (JasperReport) JRLoader.loadObject(is);
        Map<String, Object> parameters = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        parameters.put("timestamp", new Date());
        JRDataSource jrDataSource = new JRBeanCollectionDataSource(new Vector(), false);
        JasperPrint jasperPrint = JasperFillManager.fillReport(jasperReport, parameters, jrDataSource);
        byte[] pdf = JasperExportManager.exportReportToPdf(jasperPrint);
        return pdf;
    } catch (JRException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Could not create PDF.", e);
    }
}

The reason is that JRFontNotFoundException is only thrown if font in the attribute fontName is not installed:

Exception raised when a font name used as value for the fontName attribute in the report template, is not found in any of the runtime available JasperReports font extensions, nor among the font names available to the Java Virtual Machine.

Is there any way to abort generation of PDF if the font in attribute pdfFontName is not installed (instead of using any other installed font)?

Petter Friberg Petter Friberg · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-24T00:22:25

Your are setting pdfFontName not fontName

pdfFontName was an old way, now deprecated to indicate what font the itext library should use, jasper-reports will not throw JRFontNotFoundException if the font is missing, instead itext will throw an exception that is caught and relaunched as a JRRuntimeException.

In itext Helvetica is included as afm file, hence itext will not throw any exception if this is used, however this does not guarantee that your text is rendered correctly if you are indicating another font (in your case not indicating = default font) in jasper-reports. In fact this is a mess and both pdfFontName and pfdEncoding was deprecated.

Is there any way to abort generation of PDF if the font in attribute pdfFontName is not installed?

Don't use pdfFontName, but if you insist (for the sake of the question) then also set fontName="Helvetica", setting the jasper-reports font will raise a JRFontNotFoundException if not found.

The correct way is to only set the fontName and then provide font-extensions, in the font-extension you include the actual ttf, indicate the encoding and if it should be embedded.

BTW: I would use encoding Identity-H this is recommend for newer PDF standards and gives you the ability to mix different encoding.

Why doesn't jasper report throw a JRFontNotFoundException if font for PDF is missing?

1 Answers