Programmatically Generate PDF Report with design

Question

The background right now is that I coded website for the client and as part of the website I have a service calling a webpage every 5-10 minutes to generate some PDFS that become available on the website. The PDFs just contain a data dump of a table that is displayed on the website.

The new requirements are to add a cover page and apply a color scheme to the PDF report which replicates the view on the website.

I'm unsure how to go about this using C# and VS2008 with the backend database being MySQL. I originally thought about creating a report and then somehow programmatically rendering and saving it as a PDF, but because we are using MySQL that throws out the possibility of using Sql Server Reporting Services. Is there any other open source and/or free solution that will allow me to create and design the report and then programmatically create and save as a pdf without any user interaction?

Answer 1

jsreport supports exactly this kind of pdf generation. You first create a report layout and dynamic structure using html, css and javascript templating engines. Then you just send the data and invoke the rendering using c# classes.

This blog post should give you more info how to do it.

Disclaimer: I am the author of jsreport.

Answer 2

Try TCPDF. Though written in PHP, it has no external dependencies, has plenty of options and examples included. Works fast and reliable, no problems with fonts, etc.

Answer 3

Your best bet is iText here. It supports creating pdf programmatically in java or C#. We use it where I work to do just this thing (also using MySQL on the backend). I also recommend buying the book. It has lots of good examples, and if you purchase the book, you get a pdf version of the book.