I've been using the Winnovative HTML to PDF converter for a few years, but I've noticed the quality can be impared because the images etc have first had to be rendered in HTML before being converted into a PDF format.
Winnovative have another option where you can add objects to the PDF Converter before outputting the result, but as this allows you to add HTML elements, I imagine this works in a similar way to the HTML to PDF converter (in terms of rendering).
Is there an alternative to this so that I can generate a PDF in my ASP.NET Web Application without it first having to be rendered as HTML?
I'm looking for the most high quality option
You can use iTextSharp library. It has an object representation of whole PDF document so it will allow you to add any elements you need without translating it from html elements. It also allows you to convert html to pdf, but of course you can do it manually instead by building PDF document from basic blocks...
If you will use version 4.x then it's free to use in commercial projects (LGPL license). Version 5.x is avaible on Affero General Public License so I believe you have to buy it to use in commercial projects, but the features I've described are avaible in the 4.xversion
try http://wkhtmltopdf.org/
it's lightning fast in comparison to iTextSharp.
For step by step installation check out these articles:
http://www.megustaulises.com/2012/12/mvcnet-convert-html-to-pdf-with-pechkin.html
http://w3facility.org/question/how-to-pass-html-as-a-string-using-wkhtmltopdf/
And this manual:
http://madalgo.au.dk/~jakobt/wkhtmltoxdoc/wkhtmltopdf-0.9.9-doc.html
Related
I am working for an office-add-in for PowerPoint. I need to assign some unique identifier to my files, so that files can be identified in any dot net application. I did similar work for Word using custom properties. But for PowerPoint there is no way to read/ write custom property using office.js.
The only way I found using tags:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/powerpoint/tagging-presentations-slides-shapes
but when I add tags to the presentation, I am not able to see those tags in presentation directly, I am able to read/ write through code only. Also I am not getting a way to read these tags from dot net application.
Any help will be great.
I am storing my files to azure blob. And reading files in my dot net core application to identify whether it has been saved from an office-add in or not. I am using syncfusion library in dot net core application to work with files.
Try this:
Open a PPT file and add a few tags "wwwww", "yyyyy", "zzzzz".
Close and save the file.
Add ".zip" onto the end of the filename.
Use any unzipper program to unzip the file.
Search the folder of unzipped files for "wwwww", "yyyyy", "zzzzz".
This should tell you where/how tags are stored in the OOXML.
Your .NET app should be able to use the OOXML SDK to read the tags of a PPT file.
At present, Syncfusion Presentation library do not have support to read and edit the tags of PowerPoint elements. Please track the status of this feature from below link,
https://www.syncfusion.com/feedback/1800/create-and-edit-tags-for-powerpoint-elements
However, kindly try the below suggested workaround solutions to achieve your requirement,
Using Shape.Name property:
Add a shape with unique name while generating a document from Office-Addin. You can use Shape.Name property for this.
In .NET Core application, identify the corresponding shape by using Shape.ShapeName property of Syncfusion Presentation library and decide whether its generated by Office-Addin or not. You can refer below UG documentation for more details,
https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/presentation/working-with-shapes#specifying-shape-properties
Using custom meta-data on Presentation:
PowerPoint Javascript API documentation states that, when we apply the tags for Presentation object it’s maintained as a custom property of PowerPoint document.
Screenshot
If so, you can able to iterate the custom property of PowerPoint document using Presentation.CustomDocumentProperties API of Syncfusion Presentation library. You can refer below UG documentation for more details,
https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/presentation/working-with-powerpoint-presentation#adding-custom-document-properties
Note: This update is from Syncfusion team
I want to export a few Pages to pdf/xls. By Pages I mean as the eye sees it - a screenshot of the Page's contents. I know how to build pdf/xls documents using 3rd party tools but is there any way to quickly export the rendered contents of say a Panel?
edit: maybe a tool that can render the page's output as a browser would, and save it as an image file?
There is an open source console program named wkhtmltopdf which you could call from asp.net to convert the page. It can convert to PDF or an image with wkhtmltoimage (JPG, PNG, etc.) using the webkit rendering engine.
Check my answer to this question to see an example of how to convert from a html to a pdf using C#:
Easiest way of porting html table data to readable document
I can recommend http://www.screengrab.org/ for firefox.
I want to display a word Document, which is sitting on my IIS. I want to display the whole document as is, inside a iFrame on my aspx page.
I know I can use MS Word Libs, but I cannot install Word on Server where application will be hosted, (Correct me if I am wrong: I cannot use just dlls without installing MS Word on Server).
How can I display the word document in my iFrame?
Probably the easiest way would be to include the Google Docs Viewer.
Other ways could be to use Aspose.Words (commercial) to convert Word to PDF and then use Aspose.Pdf.Kit to convert PDF to images and then display the images online.
PowerTools for Open XML contains an open source, free implementation of a conversion from DOCX to HTML formatted with CSS. The module HtmlConverter.cs supports all paragraph, character, and table styles, fonts and text formatting, numbered and bulleted lists, images, and more. See http://bit.ly/1bclyg9
Can someone point me to some code/tutorial on how to upload pdf files and store them, then moreover how to use a pdf reader to display the file as read only in an asp.net application.
Is there a PDF reader already in the visual studio toolbox?
The approach I would use in this situation is to upload the PDF as you would any other file, then use a tool like GhostScript to convert the PDF pages into image files that you can show in ASP .Net.
Here's a tutorial doing that in C# http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/GhostScriptUseWithCSharp.aspx
Adobe provides (on acrobat.com) a free service which provides you with the ability to upload pdf (and also other types like doc...) and then embed a nice flash interface for displaying the files on your page.
It's pretty helpful as you can store some 5 gigs of files here.
But if you want to let the users upload their own files then this won't help you.
PDF is a final format file, ie its is read-only for the most part and can be embedded into the page via the <object> tag, except if you mean downloadable by the user.
Displaying PDF is generally done by rasterising to an image format for display (ie as an image on the page or via a richer interface (with zooming etc) through flash/silverlight etc.
You can use [GhostScript][1] to interpret PDF files and convert them to an image.
[1]: http://www.GhostScript .com
Uploading a PDF is just like any other file. Use the ASP.NET file uploader control:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/fileupload.aspx
In order to view the PDF in an ASP.NET application, you could either depend on Acrobat being there or use a PDF Viewer control.
The company I work for, Atalasoft, sells a PDF Reader add-on to our web viewer controls. You can learn more here: http://www.atalasoft.com/products/dotimage/pdf-reader
I'm developing a CMS aplication in ASP .Net using WebForms and I'm looking for a way to create new PDF files based on a template.
This feature will be used to generate contracts where some placeholders will be replaced with the customer data.
What's the best approach to do that?
Edited: The templates will be static, the main content will never change from customer to customer, only some text in the beginning that will contain the placeholders to recive the customer data. The catch is that I must allow the owner of the application to upload new templates in PDF, with the predetermined placeholders in it to allow the replacement to occur.
I can think of two approaches depending on what type of template you are looking at:
1) Static Template - Say the template does not change with the data (Ex.some standard compliance form etc)
You can try something like iTextSharp, where you have your templates defined in your .net code, and you just "plug in" the relevant data and render the PDF via iTextSharp.
2) Dynamic Templates - Say your template isn't standard and is user customizable. In this case, I'd say go for HTML for designing and "print" the for to PDF. There are many components available.
You may also want to try out components like crystal reports.
I'd go with static HTML templates containing substitution tokens e.g. {FullName} which you can then replace with your data. Once you have created an HTML file like this, say in a StringBuilder, you can use PrinceXML or ABCPdf.net (www.websupergoo.com) to transform your HTML into a PDF.
I hope I am understaning this correctly but wouldn't using standard PDF Form Fields give you the functionality and features you require. Load the PDF template into Adobe Acrobat Full or Foxit Phantom and define standard PDF Form Fields on top of the PDF. Each field has a name, position, font etc.
Then just use a standard PDF library to fill in the PDF form fields and 'flatten' the form fields if that is required.
This solution allows the customer to design new PDF layouts and so long as they define form fields with names that match up then you will be able to drop in the replacement form with a simple file copy.
The iText or iTextSharp library should be able to do all of this quite easily. If not them there are many PDF libraries out there that can.