CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#pdf-generationitext
xmorera
xmorera

Reputation: 1961

iTextSharp HTML to PDF returns PDF in response - undesired behavior

I am using iTextSharp to generate a copy of the receipt of a payment and save in a location in case it is needed afterwards. Basically I added this function in a separate C# class that takes an html and saves file. This is called from a function in an ASPX page.

It works fine but the problem that I have is that somehow the PDF is actually being returned as characters to the Response and are inserted at the beginning of my page.

I also checked with Fiddler and I can see that the response has just a lot of characters before the start of the actual html. Any thoughts on why iTextSharp and even how it inserts the characters if I am not even remotely sending anything back to the response?

  public string CreatePDFInvoice(string htmlText, int invoiceID)
{

    Document pdfDocument = new Document(PageSize.LETTER, 70, 55, 40, 25);
    string newPDFFilePath = @"C:\temp\receipt-" + invoiceID.ToString() + "-" +DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString() + ".pdf";

    try
    {
        PdfWriter wri = PdfWriter.GetInstance(pdfDocument, new FileStream(newPDFFilePath, FileMode.Create));
        PdfWriter.GetInstance(pdfDocument, HttpContext.Current.Response.OutputStream);
        pdfDocument.Open();
        XMLWorkerHelper.GetInstance().ParseXHtml(wri, pdfDocument, new StringReader(htmlText));

    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        throw ex;
    }
    finally
    {
        pdfDocument.Close();
    }
    return newPDFFilePath;
}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1362

Answers (2)

jlvaquero
jlvaquero

Reputation: 8785

Every time you use PdfWriter.GetInstance you are creating a new PdfWriter and adding this Writer to the pdfDocument . Then the PDF representation of every Element added to this Document will be written to the outputstream.

You are actually sending the pdf to the Reponse because you are creating a pdfWriter that writes to HttpContext.Current.Response.OutputStream in line 10.

PdfWriter.GetInstance(pdfDocument, HttpContext.Current.Response.OutputStream);

Upvotes: 3

Bruno Lowagie
Bruno Lowagie

Reputation: 77546

Please take a look at these two lines in your source code:

PdfWriter wri = PdfWriter.GetInstance(pdfDocument, new FileStream(newPDFFilePath, FileMode.Create));
PdfWriter.GetInstance(pdfDocument, HttpContext.Current.Response.OutputStream);

In the first of these two lines, you create a PdfWriter that writes a PDF-file to a path on your server. If I understand your question correctly, this is the desired behavior: you want to a document for later use.

Now look at the second line. This creates a PdfWriter instance that writes PDF bytes to the output stream of the Response object. If I understand your question correctly, this is undesired behavior. Remove this line and the undesired behavior will no longer occur.

Upvotes: 2

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