ASP .NET Core PDF

Generating a PDF in ASP .NET Core.

Options

Paid & Bad

https://dotnetcoretutorials.com/2019/07/02/creating-a-pdf-in-net-core

• Select PDF: $500 & CE version: https://selectpdf.com/community-edition 5 pages
• Iron PDF: paid
• WkHtmlToPdf: native dependency
• SpirePDF: $600
• EO PDF: $750
• Aspose PDF: $1000
• ITextSharp: AGPL

Good

• PDF Sharp: .NET only, .NET Core port https://github.com/ststeiger/PdfSharpCore
• Chromium: CLI

PDFSharpCore

https://www.nuget.org/packages/PdfSharpCore

public IActionResult Index()
{
  var document = new PdfDocument();
  var page = document.AddPage();
  var graphics = XGraphics.FromPdfPage(page);
  var font = new XFont("OpenSans", 20, XFontStyle.Bold);

  graphics.DrawString("Hello World!", font, XBrushes.Black, new XRect(20, 20, page.Width, page.Height), XStringFormats.Center);

  var memoryStream = new MemoryStream();
  document.Save(memoryStream);

  // Preview:
  return new FileStreamResult(memoryStream, new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/pdf"));

  // Download:
  return new FileStreamResult(memoryStream, new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/pdf")) { FileDownloadName = "download.pdf" };
}

dotnet watch run

See the Index Home controller action for a full example. Headers and footers seem to need to be done on per-page basis.

Chromium

https://www.nuget.org/packages/GoogleChrome

chrome --headless --print-to-pdf="render.pdf" file://

See the Privacy Home controller action for a full example. Headers and footers seem to need to be done on per-page basis using CSS.