Displaying a web page as a pdf with click of a button

Question

I have a new requirement to have a button in my web page, and upon clicking, it displays the web page as a PDF. On researching I found that iTextSharp is used for such purpose. But I have many Telerik and ASP controls in my web page too. Can I get that also in the PDF using iTextSharp?

If yes then can anyone please provide me a basic link to start using iTextSharp as I haven't came across this tool yet.

According to the answer from @ahaliav I tried with the following code. However, I'm not getting the controls on the pdf.

    protected void btnExport_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
        Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename=TestPage.pdf");
        Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);

        MemoryStream msOutput = new MemoryStream();
        TextReader reader = new StringReader(HtmlContent);

        // step 1: creation of a document-object
        Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4, 30, 30, 30, 30);
        HTMLWorker worker = new HTMLWorker(document);
        // step 2:
        // we create a writer that listens to the document
        // and directs a XML-stream to a file
        PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, Response.OutputStream);

        // step 3: we create a worker parse the document

        // step 4: we open document and start the worker on the document
        document.Open();
        worker.StartDocument();

        // step 5: parse the html into the document
        worker.Parse(reader);

        // step 6: close the document and the worker
        worker.EndDocument();
        worker.Close();
        document.Close();
        //Response.Write(document);
        //Response.End();

    }
    protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {
        // setup a TextWriter to capture the markup
        TextWriter tw = new StringWriter();
        HtmlTextWriter htw = new HtmlTextWriter(tw);

        // render the markup into our surrogate TextWriter
        base.Render(htw);

        // get the captured markup as a string
        string pageSource = tw.ToString();

        // render the markup into the output stream verbatim
        writer.Write(pageSource);

        // remove the viewstate field from the captured markup
        HtmlContent = Regex.Replace(pageSource,
            "<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"__VIEWSTATE\" id=\"__VIEWSTATE\" value=\".*?\" />",
            "", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

        // the page source, without the viewstate field, is in viewStateRemoved
        // do what you like with it

    }

Please help . I have other option also,that is to display the image of the full web page when i click a button.Can anyone guide me to any possible directions for these two issues please.

I finally changed my code as:

        Response.ContentType = "application/msword";
        Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename=TestPage.doc");
        Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.NoCache);
        MemoryStream msOutput = new MemoryStream();

With this i am able to get the msword document containing all my controls ,but i am also getting some unwanted texts,how can i remove that,if anyone encountered the same problem?

I am using [wkhtmltopdf](http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/) in one of my projects to generate a PDF based on a webpage. — Christofer Eliasson, May 03 '12 at 13:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 03 '12 at 13:04

1

A very simple Google search brings us to the following forum thread which has your "sollution": http://forums.asp.net/t/1039486.aspx/1

answered May 03 '12 at 13:04

dweiss

832
4
9

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 06 '12 at 09:14

After some research i did not find any solution for showing the controls in the html this code below works fine but with out showing the controls, in the past i used this http://www.winnovative-software.com/ and it works good for html pages including all controlls you can also test it onlie, the "only" problem is it you need to pay for the license

protected void btnExportToPdf_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        renderPDF = true;
    }

    protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
    {           
        if (renderPDF == true)
        {
            MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream();
            StreamWriter twr = new StreamWriter(mem);
            HtmlTextWriter myWriter = new HtmlTextWriter(twr);
            base.Render(myWriter);
            myWriter.Flush();
            myWriter.Dispose();
            StreamReader strmRdr = new StreamReader(mem);
            strmRdr.BaseStream.Position = 0;
            string pageContent = strmRdr.ReadToEnd();
            strmRdr.Dispose();
            mem.Dispose();
            writer.Write(pageContent);
            CreatePDFDocument(pageContent);
        }
        else
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            HtmlTextWriter tw = new HtmlTextWriter(new System.IO.StringWriter(sb));
            base.Render(tw);
            // get the captured markup as a string
            string pageSource = tw.ToString();
            //Get the rendered content
            string sContent = sb.ToString();
            //Now output it to the page, if you want
            writer.Write(sContent);
        }
    }

    public void CreatePDFDocument(string strHtml)
    {


        string strHTMLpath = Server.MapPath("MyHTML.html");
        StreamWriter strWriter = new StreamWriter(strHTMLpath, false, Encoding.UTF8);
        strWriter.Write(strHtml);
        strWriter.Close();
        string strFileName = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("map1.pdf"); //    strFileName    "C:\\Inetpub\\wwwroot\\Test\\map1.pdf" 
        // step 1: creation of a document-object
        Document document = new Document();
        // step 2:
        // we create a writer that listens to the document
        PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, new FileStream(strFileName, FileMode.Create));
        StringReader se = new StringReader(strHtml);
        TextReader tr = new StreamReader(Server.MapPath("MyHTML.html"));

        //add the collection to the document
        document.Open();                        
        /////////
        iTextSharp.text.html.simpleparser.HTMLWorker worker = new iTextSharp.text.html.simpleparser.HTMLWorker(document);

        worker.StartDocument();

        //// step 5: parse the html into the document
        worker.Parse(tr);

        //// step 6: close the document and the worker
        worker.EndDocument();

        //worker.Parse(tr); // getting error "Illegal characters in path"
        document.Close();
        ShowPdf(strFileName);
    }
    public void ShowPdf(string strFileName)
    {
        Response.ClearContent();
        Response.ClearHeaders();
        Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", "inline;filename=" + strFileName);
        Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
        Response.WriteFile(strFileName);
        Response.Flush();
        Response.Clear();
    }

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 03 '12 at 13:08

0

iTextSharp comes with a little companion : XML Worker

For a demo, have a look here

Even though the documentation refers to the Java API, the adaptation to C# should be straightforward.

As for Telerik/ASP tags, you can extend XMLWorker and define how to convert such tags into PDF elements.

answered May 03 '12 at 13:08

Alexis Pigeon

7,423
11
39
44

I have further modified my question,please help with that – Vipin Nair May 04 '12 at 06:28
You added a new question to the original one. You should have created a new question for that. – Alexis Pigeon May 04 '12 at 07:21
Sorry about that ,but can u please help me with that.I will post a new question – Vipin Nair May 04 '12 at 08:01
Here is my new question- http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10445049/converting-web-page-to-word-and-then-to-pdf-in-asp-net – Vipin Nair May 04 '12 at 08:08

Displaying a web page as a pdf with click of a button

3 Answers3