List symbol not showing when inputing a special character in List.setListSymbol() in itext7

Question

I am trying to set the list symbol for my list to ☐ but for some reason when the pdf is created, nothing shows.

I tried

List list = new List().setListSymbol("\u2610");

And also,

List list = new List().setListSymbol("☐");

I also tried

List list = new List().setListSymbol(">");

just to make sure the code was working and it was - the list showed up with ">" as the bullet point.

How can I get the bullet point of my list to be "☐"?

Answer 1

Can you try the following code to render "☐" as bullet point.

    PdfWriter writer = new PdfWriter("src/main/resources/test/list.PDF");
    PdfDocument pdfDoc = new PdfDocument(writer);
    pdfDoc.setDefaultPageSize(PageSize.A4);
    Document doc = new Document(pdfDoc);
    
    PdfFont unicodeFont = PdfFontFactory.createFont("src/main/resources/test/arial.ttf", PdfEncodings.IDENTITY_H);
    
     List list = new List();
     list.setFont(unicodeFont);
     list.setListSymbol("☐");

     list.add(new ListItem("list 1"));
     list.add(new ListItem("list 2"));
     list.add(new ListItem("list 3"));
     
     doc.add(list);
     doc.close();