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I know this tool looks up on a url and converts the repsponse to pdf. How do I convert a 

<html> content.. </html>

into a pdf?

I was looking at the help files on wkhtml2pdf and looks like it provides an option of stdin but I can't really figure out how to emulate stdin.

Also if you know a tool which does a better job, please suggest me some.

Thanks a lot!

rlee923
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5 Answers5

15

I just started a new project to provide a C# P/Invoke wrapper around wkhtmltopdf.

You can checkout my code at: https://github.com/pruiz/WkHtmlToXSharp

Greets.

Pablo Ruiz García
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9

Take a look at Pechkin

.NET Wrapper for WkHtmlToPdf DLL, library that uses Webkit engine to convert HTML pages to PDF.

Nuget packages:

Pechkin.Synchronized

Pechkin

Example code:

private void ConvertToPdf()
{
    var loadPath = Server.MapPath("~/HtmlTemplates");
    var loadFile = Path.Combine(loadPath, "Test.html");
    var savePath = Server.MapPath("~/Pdf");
    var saveFile = Path.Combine(savePath, DateTime.Now.ToString("HH-mm-ss.fff") + ".pdf");

    var globalConfig = new GlobalConfig()
        .SetMargins(0, 0, 0, 0)
        .SetPaperSize(PaperKind.A4);

    var pdfWriter = new SynchronizedPechkin(globalConfig);

    pdfWriter.Error += OnError;
    pdfWriter.Warning += OnWarning;

    var objectConfig = new ObjectConfig()
        .SetPrintBackground(true)
        .SetIntelligentShrinking(false);

    var pdfBuffer = pdfWriter.Convert(objectConfig, File.ReadAllText(loadFile));

    File.WriteAllBytes(saveFile, pdfBuffer);
}

private void OnWarning(SimplePechkin converter, string warningtext)
{
    throw new NotImplementedException();
}

private void OnError(SimplePechkin converter, string errortext)
{
    throw new NotImplementedException();
}
Răzvan Flavius Panda
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  • I just couldn't use this library. Do you have any advice on how **exactly** I should use it? Trying to install it via nuGet gives me a version error (Install-Package : Could not install package 'Pechkin.Synchronized 0.5.8.1'. You are trying to install this package into a project that targets '.NETFramework,Version=v3.5', but the package does not contain any assembly references or content files that are compatible with that framework.) – marquito Sep 09 '13 at 22:31
  • Problem is: I can't even run the dlls inside my web project. Nowhere in the docs I can find what .NET version I should be using. It states not to be compatible with my version, but what version is it compatible with? My PDF generation is working beautifully, full of graphics and coloured tables, but I'm not able to generate it from ASP.NET and this is very frustrating. I feel I'm close but just can't do it. – marquito Sep 10 '13 at 12:42
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    @marquito: yeah, it requires .NET 4.0, I checked the dll with JustDecompile and it depends on mscorlib from 4.0 – Răzvan Flavius Panda Sep 10 '13 at 12:56
  • Hummm... that's bad. Our system is huge and running under 3.5. Thanks for your effort, Mr. @Panda – marquito Sep 10 '13 at 13:06
  • @marquito: you might want to just add https://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/downloads/list to your server and call it from C#, it has binaries for windows/linux – Răzvan Flavius Panda Sep 10 '13 at 13:22
  • That's what I've been trying to do, to no avail. I feel like a noob. I've tried this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1331926/calling-wkhtmltopdf-to-generate-pdf-from-html/1698839#1698839 It's probably a path issue. – marquito Sep 10 '13 at 13:25
  • If you can, please join me at: http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/37112/wkhtmltopdf – marquito Sep 10 '13 at 13:32
5

wkhtmltopdf is a free tool, but it's not written in .NET and it could be kind of hard to integrate into your asp.net application.

you can take a look at iTextSharp, which is free, but cannot handle any kind of html, or you can take a look at commercial tools to convert html to pdf, like ExpertPDF or ABCpdf, that can handle any html/css.

charpdevel0p3r
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  • it's not a problem to integrate it in an asp.net application – duedl0r Jul 13 '11 at 08:22
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    `iTextSharp` has an AGPL copyleft license and cannot be used in commercial applications without making the full source code of the project opened or paying for it – Răzvan Flavius Panda Apr 16 '13 at 09:52
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    In my opinion if you want to use WkHtmlToPdf into your C# app. Since the library is built in C++ (https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltopdf) and producing a native DLL, I can think about two possible ways for using it from .NET 1. A wrapper library using P/Invoke (DLLimport, ...) for calling native functionality from C#. 2. A wrapper library invoking an executable Each one has its advantages and disadvantages, I haven seen nuget packages for both – hmadrigal Jan 28 '18 at 16:02
2

I found a way. You can set up another to output the normal html. And use that url as the input value of wkhtml2pdf process.

----------Edit

public byte[] WKHtmlToPdf(string url_input)
    {
        try
        {
            var fileName = " - ";
            var wkhtmlDir = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["wkhtmlDir"];
            var wkhtml = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["wkhtml"];
            var p = new Process();

            string url = Request.Url.GetLeftPart(UriPartial.Authority) + @"/application/" + url_input;

            p.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
            p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
            p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
            p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
            p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            p.StartInfo.FileName = wkhtml;
            p.StartInfo.WorkingDirectory = wkhtmlDir;

            string switches = "";
            switches += "--print-media-type ";
            switches += "--margin-top 10mm --margin-bottom 10mm --margin-right 10mm --margin-left 10mm ";
            switches += "--page-size Letter ";
            p.StartInfo.Arguments = switches + " " + url + " " + fileName;
            p.Start();

            //read output
            byte[] buffer = new byte[32768];
            byte[] file;
            using (var ms = new MemoryStream())
            {
                while (true)
                {
                    int read = p.StandardOutput.BaseStream.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);

                    if (read <= 0)
                    {
                        break;
                    }
                    ms.Write(buffer, 0, read);
                }
                file = ms.ToArray();
            }

            // wait or exit
            p.WaitForExit(60000);

            // read the exit code, close process
            int returnCode = p.ExitCode;
            p.Close();

            return returnCode == 0 ? file : null;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {

           // set your exceptions here
            return null;
        }
    }

----------web.config key example

  <add key="wkhtmlDir" value="C:\Program Files (x86)\wkhtmltopdf\bin"/>
    <add key="wkhtml" value="C:\Program Files (x86)\wkhtmltopdf\bin\wkhtmltopdf.exe"/>

The basic idea is passing url to the exe as an argument.

HTH !

rlee923
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0

if you want to print specific part of html with Css

install Nuget packages:

Pechkin.Synchronized

StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
    HtmlTextWriter hw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw);
  pnlprint.RenderControl(hw);
    StringReader sr = new StringReader(sw.ToString());
   string cssPath = Server.MapPath("~/css/style1.css");

    string cssString = File.ReadAllText(cssPath);
     cssPath = Server.MapPath("~/css/bootstrap.css");
    string cssString2 = File.ReadAllText(cssPath);
    cssString += cssString2;
    GlobalConfig gc = new GlobalConfig();
    byte[] pdfContent = new SimplePechkin(new GlobalConfig()).Convert(@"<html><head><style>" + cssString + "</style></head><body>" + sw.ToString() + "</body></html>");

here you can easily understand the working of wkhtmltopdf https://ourcodeworld.com/articles/read/366/how-to-generate-a-pdf-from-html-using-wkhtmltopdf-with-c-in-winforms

inzmam sahil
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