H2Pdf

🚀 Generate production-ready PDFs using Razor components and C# in minutes.

H2Pdf bridges modern .NET UI development and deterministic PDF generation. Build PDFs with familiar .razor components, strongly typed C#, and dependency injection.

✨ Features

• Razor components as PDF templates
• Fluent PDF document model API
• Optional HTML-to-PDF pipeline (HtmlPdfRenderer)
• ASP.NET Core dependency injection integration
• Cross-platform rendering (Windows, Linux, macOS)

🚀 Quick Start (30 seconds)

Requirements: .NET 10 SDK

git clone https://github.com/evilz/H2Pdf.git
cd H2Pdf
dotnet build
cd samples/H2Pdf.Sample
dotnet run

Generated files:

• sample-output.pdf
• invoice-sample.pdf

📦 Installation

Install via NuGet:

dotnet add package H2Pdf

Or clone from source:

git clone https://github.com/evilz/H2Pdf.git
cd H2Pdf
dotnet build

📖 Usage

var services = new ServiceCollection();
services.AddLogging();
services.AddH2Pdf();

var provider = services.BuildServiceProvider();
var renderer = provider.GetRequiredService<PdfRenderer>();

var parameters = new Dictionary<string, object?>
{
    ["Name"] = "Developer",
    ["Message"] = "This PDF was generated from a Razor component."
};

var document = await renderer.RenderToPdfAsync<HelloWorld>(parameters);
renderer.SaveToPdf(document, "output.pdf");

See samples/ and examples/ for complete usage patterns.

⚡ Benchmark

Compare Playwright HTML-to-PDF with H2Pdf HTML-to-MigraDoc rendering:

dotnet build benchmarks/H2Pdf.Benchmarks
pwsh benchmarks/H2Pdf.Benchmarks/bin/Debug/net10.0/playwright.ps1 install chromium
dotnet run -c Release --project benchmarks/H2Pdf.Benchmarks

Environment

• BenchmarkDotNet v0.14.0
• .NET 10.0.2 (RyuJIT, AVX2)
• Windows 11 x64
• GC: Concurrent Workstation

🧪 Benchmarked Pipelines

1. Playwright (Chromium)

   • HTML rendered in headless Chromium
   • PDF generated via Page.PdfAsync()

2. MigraDoc (via HtmlPdfRenderer)

   • HTML → MigraDoc DOM
   • MigraDoc → PDF via PdfDocumentRenderer

📈 Example output (single run)

Method	Mean	StdDev	Gen0	Gen1	Allocated
PlaywrightHtmlToPdfAsync	9.231 ms	0.196 ms	15.63	-	188 KB
MigraDoc_HtmlToPdf	4.684 ms	0.014 ms	312.50	109.38	2.68 MB

These numbers are an example from one environment and one HTML payload.
Results will vary by machine, OS, runtime version, browser version, and template complexity.

⏱ Latency per PDF (example)

• MigraDoc: ~4.68 ms
• Playwright: ~9.23 ms

📊 Stability (Jitter, example)

Pipeline	StdDev
MigraDoc	0.014 ms
Playwright	0.196 ms

🧠 Memory Behavior (example)

Pipeline	Allocated per PDF
Playwright	~188 KB
MigraDoc	~2.68 MB

GC activity:

• MigraDoc → Triggers Gen0 + Gen1
• Playwright → Mostly Gen0 only

Use benchmark output in your environment to compare trade-offs for your workloads.

🧠 Why this exists

Most PDF generation tools force teams to use low-level primitives or separate template systems. H2Pdf keeps PDF authoring in your existing .NET workflow with:

• component-driven composition
• familiar Razor syntax
• predictable, code-reviewable output

🛣 Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome PRs and ideas. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md.

⭐ Star History

🏗 Architecture

High-level internals are documented in Architecture.md.

📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE.