C# – Insert HTML directly in PDF using itextsharp

citextsharp

I have WPF application in which user enters some text in rich text box(rtb), I convert that rtb string to HTML and then convert that HTML to image and then insert it in the PDF document

using (Stream inputPdfStream = new FileStream("sample.pdf", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read))
using (Stream outputPdfStream = new FileStream("result2.pdf", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write, FileShare.None))
{
  var reader = new PdfReader(inputPdfStream);
  var stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, outputPdfStream);

  PdfContentByte pdfContentByte = null;

  int c = reader.NumberOfPages;
  iTextSharp.text.Image image =   TextSharp.text.Image.GetInstance(ConvertXamltohtmltoImage(xamlstring));

  foreach (var item in lst)
  {
      image.ScaleToFit(item._Size.Width, item._Size.Height);
      image.SetAbsolutePosition(item.Location.X, item.Location.Y);
      pdfContentByte = stamper.GetOverContent(item.pageNo);
      pdfContentByte.AddImage(image);
  }
  stamper.Close();
}

My question is can I insert HTML directly into PDF?

Best Answer

You need an extra DLL to do that: http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/files/xmlworker/ See the demo: http://demo.itextsupport.com/xmlworker/ Unfortunately, the documentation hasn't been updated recently. We're working on it.

Related Solutions

C# – Should ‘using’ directives be inside or outside the namespace

There is actually a (subtle) difference between the two. Imagine you have the following code in File1.cs:

// File1.cs
using System;
namespace Outer.Inner
{
    class Foo
    {
        static void Bar()
        {
            double d = Math.PI;
        }
    }
}

Now imagine that someone adds another file (File2.cs) to the project that looks like this:

// File2.cs
namespace Outer
{
    class Math
    {
    }
}

The compiler searches Outer before looking at those using directives outside the namespace, so it finds Outer.Math instead of System.Math. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), Outer.Math has no PI member, so File1 is now broken.

This changes if you put the using inside your namespace declaration, as follows:

// File1b.cs
namespace Outer.Inner
{
    using System;
    class Foo
    {
        static void Bar()
        {
            double d = Math.PI;
        }
    }
}

Now the compiler searches System before searching Outer, finds System.Math, and all is well.

Some would argue that Math might be a bad name for a user-defined class, since there's already one in System; the point here is just that there is a difference, and it affects the maintainability of your code.

It's also interesting to note what happens if Foo is in namespace Outer, rather than Outer.Inner. In that case, adding Outer.Math in File2 breaks File1 regardless of where the using goes. This implies that the compiler searches the innermost enclosing namespace before it looks at any using directive.

C# – Convert HTML to PDF in .NET

EDIT: New Suggestion HTML Renderer for PDF using PdfSharp

(After trying wkhtmltopdf and suggesting to avoid it)

HtmlRenderer.PdfSharp is a 100% fully C# managed code, easy to use, thread safe and most importantly FREE (New BSD License) solution.

Usage

Download HtmlRenderer.PdfSharp nuget package.

Use Example Method.

public static Byte[] PdfSharpConvert(String html)
{
    Byte[] res = null;
    using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
    {
        var pdf = TheArtOfDev.HtmlRenderer.PdfSharp.PdfGenerator.GeneratePdf(html, PdfSharp.PageSize.A4);
        pdf.Save(ms);
        res = ms.ToArray();
    }
    return res;
}

A very Good Alternate Is a Free Version of iTextSharp

Until version 4.1.6 iTextSharp was licensed under the LGPL licence and versions until 4.16 (or there may be also forks) are available as packages and can be freely used. Of course someone can use the continued 5+ paid version.

I tried to integrate wkhtmltopdf solutions on my project and had a bunch of hurdles.

I personally would avoid using wkhtmltopdf - based solutions on Hosted Enterprise applications for the following reasons.

First of all wkhtmltopdf is C++ implemented not C#, and you will experience various problems embedding it within your C# code, especially while switching between 32bit and 64bit builds of your project. Had to try several workarounds including conditional project building etc. etc. just to avoid "invalid format exceptions" on different machines.
If you manage your own virtual machine its ok. But if your project is running within a constrained environment like (Azure (Actually is impossible withing azure as mentioned by the TuesPenchin author) , Elastic Beanstalk etc) it's a nightmare to configure that environment only for wkhtmltopdf to work.
wkhtmltopdf is creating files within your server so you have to manage user permissions and grant "write" access to where wkhtmltopdf is running.
Wkhtmltopdf is running as a standalone application, so its not managed by your IIS application pool. So you have to either host it as a service on another machine or you will experience processing spikes and memory consumption within your production server.
It uses temp files to generate the pdf, and in cases Like AWS EC2 which has really slow disk i/o it is a big performance problem.
The most hated "Unable to load DLL 'wkhtmltox.dll'" error reported by many users.

--- PRE Edit Section ---

For anyone who want to generate pdf from html in simpler applications / environments I leave my old post as suggestion.

TuesPechkin

https://www.nuget.org/packages/TuesPechkin/

or Especially For MVC Web Applications (But I think you may use it in any .net application)

Rotativa

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Rotativa/

They both utilize the wkhtmtopdf binary for converting html to pdf. Which uses the webkit engine for rendering the pages so it can also parse css style sheets.

They provide easy to use seamless integration with C#.

Rotativa can also generate directly PDFs from any Razor View.

Additionally for real world web applications they also manage thread safety etc...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – Should ‘using’ directives be inside or outside the namespace

C# – Convert HTML to PDF in .NET

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