Generating PDF document in .NET using iTextSharp Library
well, it was just yesterday that I was looking into converting html to pdf programmatically in .NET 2.0. After some googling, I came up to the iTextSharp library at SourceForge.
Just built an application to test run this iTextSharp library. so here’s the code for the “Hello world” application.
private void HelloWorldPdf()
{
try
{
iTextSharp.text.Document oDoc = new iTextSharp.text.Document();
PdfWriter.GetInstance(oDoc, new FileStream(”HelloWorld.pdf”, FileMode.Create));
oDoc.Open();
oDoc.Add(new Paragraph(”Hello World!”));
oDoc.Close();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString());
}
}
It works!, Then I tried inserting an image in the pdf document and that worked too.
private void InsertImageinPDF()
{
//Already existing file
string pdfTemplate = “HelloWorld.pdf”;//@”C:\PDFFileSoftware\PdfGenerator_CS\PdfGenerator_CS\PdfGenerator\1_Form SS-4 (2007).pdf”;
//@”c:\Temp\PDF\fw4.pdf”;
string newFile = @”completed_fw4.pdf”;//c:\Temp\PDF\
PdfReader pdfReader = new PdfReader(pdfTemplate);
PdfStamper pdfStamper = new PdfStamper(pdfReader, new FileStream(newFile, FileMode.Create));
AcroFields pdfFormFields = pdfStamper.AcroFields;
string chartLoc = string.Empty;
chartLoc = @”C:\Documents and Settings\Imran Akram\My Documents\My Pictures\TheDeparted.jpg”;//@”C:\Temp\PDF\IMG_3746.jpg”;//pplLogoSmall.jpg”;
iTextSharp.text.Image chartImg = iTextSharp.text.Image.GetInstance(chartLoc);
iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfContentByte underContent;
iTextSharp.text.Rectangle rect;
try
{
Single X, Y; int pageCount = 0;
rect = pdfReader.GetPageSizeWithRotation(1);
if (chartImg.Width > rect.Width || chartImg.Height > rect.Height)
{
chartImg.ScaleToFit(rect.Width, rect.Height);
X = (rect.Width – chartImg.ScaledWidth) / 2;
Y = (rect.Height – chartImg.ScaledHeight) / 2;
}
else
{
X = (rect.Width – chartImg.Width) / 2;
Y = (rect.Height – chartImg.Height) / 2;
} chartImg.SetAbsolutePosition(X, Y);
pageCount = pdfReader.NumberOfPages;
for (int i = 1; i <= pageCount; i++)
{
underContent = pdfStamper.GetOverContent(i);//.GetUnderContent(i);
underContent.AddImage(chartImg);
}
pdfStamper.Close();
pdfReader.Close();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw ex;
}
}
OKAY So far so good, but what about the thing I needed the most…. Rendering Html to pdf!! And guess what I was quite disappointed. The HtmlParser is just not strong enough. It gets mad even if it gets a br tag, your code has to be absolutely XHTML conformant or it will give u nothing. But for your interest, I’m giving you guys the code.
/// <summary>
/// Creates the PDF document with a given content at a given location.
/// </summary>
/// <param name=”strFilePath”>The file path to write the new PDF to.</param>
/// <param name=”strContent”>Content in HTML to write to the PDF.</param>
public static void CreatePDFDocument(String strFilePath, String strContent)
{
Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4, 80, 50, 30, 65);
try
{
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, new FileStream(strFilePath, FileMode.Create));
//XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(strContent));
//reader.WhitespaceHandling = System.Xml.WhitespaceHandling.None;
//HtmlParser.Parse(document, reader);
System.Xml.XmlTextReader _xmlr = new System.Xml.XmlTextReader(new StringReader(@”<html><body>This is my <bold>test</bold> string</body></html>”));
HtmlParser.Parse(document, _xmlr);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
throw e;
}
}
I gotta say, the HtmlParser is really vulnerable. So, I decided to use ABCPdf instead. 
Hi Imran -
Would you mind giving a newbie a hand?
I’ve been trying to find a comprehensible iTextSharp example on the internet and yours looked very straightforward.
Unfortunately I’m stumped with a basic problem.
I add the iTextSharp.dll to my app. as a reference and put “using iTextSharp;” at the top.
The first line in your example compiles fine:-
iTextSharp.text.Document oDoc = new iTextSharp.text.Document();
but then when I add in the next line:-
PdfWriter.GetInstance(oDoc, new FileStream(”HelloWorld.pdf”, FileMode.Create));
It complains that PdfWriter doesn’t exist.
I’ve obviously missed something obvious. Can you tell me what it it?
Best wishes
Tony Reynolds (UK)
Tony Reynolds
November 28, 2008 at 10:39 am
Hi Tony,
Thanks for dropping by. Have you checked to see whether you’ve added the reference of iTextSharp dll in your project — yeah I understand, its a very basic fault, but I can’t find any other possible reason in my mind right now.
All the best,
Imran Akram
imak47
December 2, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Imran -
Thanks for the suggestion, but I had added the reference.
I’m pleased to say that having worked on it a bit (I told you I was a newbie!) I’ve found the problem. With my version of MS NET or maybe because of some preferences I’ve got, you have to use the full pathname. So now for the failed line I have:-
iTextSharp.text.pdf.PdfWriter.GetInstance(oDoc, new FileStream(”HelloWorld.pdf”, FileMode.Create));
and it works fine.
All the best and please keep up the helpful examples.
Tony Reynolds
Tony Reynolds
December 10, 2008 at 9:25 am
Imran,
After looking through a bunch of other html2pdf options, I too finally decided on Supergoos ABCPdf , now I ran into a couple problems..dont know if you have encountered them yet because this only happens when you you are going from a html string (not page) to pdf. When i tried to use relative paths in my src tags, it would either throw an execption, or not display the image. After some looking into the manual and reading some forums, I found out that one of the only options was to use the old outdated? I think BASE tag. If you found a work around for this, please tell me.
Thanks
-Doug
doug
December 15, 2008 at 7:43 pm