Other Open Source Projects Faq   

The AccessingFileFormats lists lots of projects that can read and write various file formats.

• iText - iText can create PDF files, fill in AcroForms, and modify PDF files in limited ways. It's also possible to generate RTF and HTML output with the same code. A demo of some basic features can be found at ItextExample

• FlyingSaucer is a library that can render XHTML/CSS to a Swing component, and -with the help of iText- to a PDF file. Introduction

• POI - Read and write Excel files. There are also parts that deal with Word, PowerPoint, Visio and Outlook files, but they're less advanced, although usable.

• JasperReports - a powerful reporting engine - Introduction - Discussion - iReport is a visual report creator for JasperReports?.

• log4j - the premier logging package - Manual - Introduction 1 - Introduction 2 - wiki - Log4jXmlFormat

• JFreeChart - versatile charting package. An example web app showing how to use it in a servlet can be found here. A simple demo can be found at JFreeChartDemo. cewolf is a JSP tag library on top of JFreeChart?; a version that has a few bugs fixed as well as some enhancements is hosted here.

• JChart2D - another 2D charting package. A simple demo can be found at JChart2DDemo

• Axis - a complete web service generation package with lots of tools for debugging. See also WebServicesFaq.

• ImageJ - an image processing application and library that can read and write plenty of file formats, and even more with the help of the Jimi plugin

• Lucene - a library that can index and search collections of documents. Links: introduction, another introduction part 1 part 2, advanced functionalities, Jakarta FAQ, jGuru FAQ

• JVLC is a Java client library for the VLC player, which can play many video formats. An example Java client can be found here.

Not open source, but free to use and frequently useful

• Java Media Framework - Sun API for working with various media formats, which seems like it's no longer being developed. Code examples can be found here. JMF can play Flash 2 files. Through the FOBS library (which itself is a Java layer on top of the ffmpeg library), support for Windows Media can be added to JMF. Jffmpeg adds a few more audio and video formats like MPEG-4 and Ogg/Vorbis.

• QuickTime for Java - Apple API for working with various media formats. The Amateur project puts a Swing GUI on top of QT for Java. Some Java example codes can be found here. QT4J can play Flash 5 files. On OS X, the Flip4Mac Components can be used to add support for Windows Media to QT4J.