Hi Dan

I built a site a few years back (V7) and used iTextSharp for generating PDF's.

Admittedly all the generation code had to be written from scratch to suit the requirements, but in essence, the same code would quite easily port over to V8 as it used IPublishedContent objects.

To download the file I used a file handler that took a couple of query string parameters.

Not sure it would be of any use, but more than happy to share the code I have if you need something to kick start the coding (assuming you are a coder).

Cheers

Nigel

if you are on your own webserver you can just use chrome.exe to gen a pdf of the html page... using the print css...

something like:

 public class ChromeController : ApiController
{
    // http://localhost:53517/api/Chrome?url=https://www.google.nl
    public HttpResponseMessage Get(string url)
    {
        var outputDirectory = WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["PdfTempStorage"];
        bool chromeLogging = Convert.ToBoolean(WebConfigurationManager.AppSettings["EnableChromeLogging"]);

        if (!Directory.Exists(outputDirectory))
        {
            Directory.CreateDirectory(outputDirectory);
        }

        var pdfResult = ChromePdfRenderer.RenderPdf(url, outputDirectory, enableLogging: chromeLogging);

        HttpResponseMessage result = new HttpResponseMessage();

        if (pdfResult.Result == RenderResult.Success)
        {
            result.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.OK;
            result.Content = new ByteArrayContent(File.ReadAllBytes(pdfResult.File));
            result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/pdf");
        }
        else
        {
            result.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError;
            result.Content = new StringContent("Error");
        }

        return result;
    }
}

and the chromerender class is

public static class ChromePdfRenderer
{
    public static PdfRenderResult RenderPdf(string url, string outputDirectory, int renderTimeout = 20000, bool enableLogging = false)
    {
        var basePath = @"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe";

        var outputFile = Path.Combine(outputDirectory, Guid.NewGuid() + ".pdf");

        string arguments;
        if (enableLogging)
        {
            arguments = "--headless --enable-logging --v=1 --disable-gpu --no-margins --print-to-pdf=" + outputFile + " " + url;
        }
        else
        {
            arguments = "--headless --disable-gpu --no-margins --print-to-pdf=" + outputFile + " " + url;
        }

        var startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
        startInfo.FileName = basePath;
        startInfo.Arguments = arguments;
        startInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
        startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = false;
        startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

        var result = new PdfRenderResult();
        var watch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
        var process = Process.Start(startInfo);

        //result.Log = process.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
        process.WaitForExit(renderTimeout);

        if (!process.HasExited)
        {
            process.Kill();
            result.Result = RenderResult.Error;
        }

        result.ExitCode = process.ExitCode;

        if (result.ExitCode == 0)
        {
            result.Result = RenderResult.Success;
            result.File = outputFile;
        }
        else
        {
            result.Result = RenderResult.Error;
        }

        process.Dispose();
        watch.Stop();
        result.Runtime = watch.ElapsedMilliseconds;

        return result;
    }
}

basepath needs to be correct of course.. but if you have access to the server you can check that var basePath = @"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe";

so then you just have an api you can use that get's a url and outputs a pdf (using print style of the page)

no dependency on any cms (version)... so doesn't break when ugrading

Hi Dan, I've set this up using iTextSharp on multiple v7 sites and the code should work fine on v8 with a few syntax tweaks. Happy to share the code with you if you need.

Thanks jonok, I like what I am seeing, and would love it if you could share your code. my email is [email protected]

I tried several of the solutions that the community suggested including Chrome2HTML, iTextSharp and wkhtmltopdf. I got all three of these to work, but found the results of converting an HTML page to a PDF lacked much of the fine grained control that I was accustom to using XML-FO and PDF Creator. After doing some research I found that PDF Creator was based on the ibex40 engine. I then disassembled the Moriyama PDF Creator package and manually installed the components and templates per the packing list into the Umbraco 8 structure. This seemed to work, leading me to think that the only problem with Moriyama PDF Creator in Umbraco 8 is the packaging and deployment list.

I want to Thank the community for all the great help

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