iTextSharp pdfpTable flowing in two columns in same page

Question

I am using iTextSharp PdfPTtable for creating tables from a database. When the table is lengthy (long but just with 3 columns), I managed to get the table flowing (

Answer 1

Your requirement is (almost) an exact match with one of the examples of my book. Please take a look at page 3 and higher of column_table.pdf.

The book has the Java version of the example, but there's also a version ported to C#.

Basically, you need to add the PdfPTable to a ColumnText object and go() as long as there is content in the column:

// Column definition
float[][] x = {
    new float[] { document.Left, document.Left + 380 },
    new float[] { document.Right - 380, document.Right }
};
column.AddElement(yourTable);
int count = 0; // can be 0 or 1 if your page is divided in 2 parts
float height = 0;
int status = 0;
// render the column as long as it has content
while (ColumnText.HasMoreText(status)) {
    // add the top-level header to each new page
    if (count == 0) {
         AddFooterTable(); // for you to implement to add a footer
         height = AddHeaderTable(); // for you to implement to add a header
    }
    // set the dimensions of the current column
    column.SetSimpleColumn(
        x[count][0], document.Bottom,
        x[count][1], document.Top - height - 10
    );
    // render as much content as possible
    status = column.Go();
    // go to a new page if you've reached the last column
    if (++count > 1) {
        count = 0;
        document.NewPage();
    }
}
document.NewPage();