In this article I am going
to demonstrate
how ASP.
Net developers can programmatically create PDF documents using iTextSharp. iTextSharp is a software component, that allows developers
to programmatically create or manipulate PDF documents. Also this article discusses the process of creating in-memory file, read/write data from/to the in-memory file utilizing the new feature MemoryMappedFile. I have a database of users, where I need
to send a notice
to all my users as a PDF document. The sending mail part of it is not covered
in this article. The PDF document will contain the company letter head,
to make it more official. I have a list of users stored
in a database table named “tblusers”. For each user I need
to send customized message addressed
to them personally. The database structure for the users is give below. id Title Full Name 1 Mr. Sreeju Nair K. G. 2 Dr. Alberto Mathews 3 Prof. Venketachalam Now I am going
to generate the pdf document that contains some message
to the user,
in the following format. Dear <Title> <FullName>, The message for the user. Regards, Administrator Also I have an
image, bg.jpg that contains the background for the document generated. I have created .
Net 4.0 empty
web application project named “iTextSharpSample”. First thing I need
to do is
to download the iTextSharp dll from the source forge. You can find the url for the download here. http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/files/ I have extracted the Zip file and added the itextsharp.dll as a reference
to my project. Also I have added a
web form named default.aspx
to my project. After doing all this, the solution explorer have the following view.
In the default.aspx page, I inserted one grid view and associated it with a SQL Data source control that bind data from tblusers. I have added a button column
in the grid view with text “generate pdf”. The output of the page
in the browser is as follows. Now I am going
to create a pdf document when the user clicking on the Generate PDF button. As I mentioned before, I am going
to work with the file
in memory, I am not going
to create a file
in the disk. I added an event handler for button by specifying onrowcommand event handler. My gridview source looks like <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" Width="481px" CellPadding="4" ForeColor="#333333" GridLines="None" onrowcommand="Generate_PDF" > ………………………………………………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………………….. </asp:GridView>
In the code behind, I wrote the corresponding event handler. protected void Generate_PDF(object sender, GridViewCommandEventArgs e) { // The button click event handler code. // I am going
to explain the code for this section
in the remaining part of the article } The Generate_PDF method is straight forward, It
get the title, fullname and message
to some variables, then create the pdf using these variables. The code for getting data from the grid view is as follows //
get the row index stored
in the CommandArgument property int index = Convert.ToInt32(e.CommandArgument); //
get the GridViewRow where the command is raised GridViewRow selectedRow = ((GridView)e.CommandSource).Rows[index]; string title = selectedRow.Cells[1].Text; string fullname = selectedRow.Cells[2].Text; string msg = @"There are some changes
in the company policy, due
to this matter you need
to submit your latest address
to us. Please update your contact details / personnal details by visiting the member area of the website. ................................... "; since I don’t want
to save the file
in the disk, I am going the new feature introduced
in .
Net framework 4, called Memory-Mapped Files. Using Memory-Mapped mapped file, you can created non-persisted memory mapped files, that are not associated with a file
in a disk. So I am going
to create a temporary file
in memory, add the pdf content
to it, then write it
to the output stream.
To read more about MemoryMappedFile, read this msdn article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997372.aspx The below portion of the code using MemoryMappedFile object
to create a test pdf document
in memory and perform read/write operation on file. The CreateViewStream() object will give you a stream that can be used
to read or write data to/from file. The code is very straight forward and I included comment so that you can understand the code. using (MemoryMappedFile mmf = MemoryMappedFile.CreateNew("test1.pdf", 1000000)) { // Create a new pdf document object using the constructor. The parameters passed are document size, left margin, right margin, top margin and bottom margin. iTextSharp.text.Document d = new iTextSharp.text.Document(PageSize.A4, 72,72,172,72); //get an instance of the memory mapped file
to stream object so that user can write
to this using (MemoryMappedViewStream stream = mmf.CreateViewStream()) { // associate the document
to the stream. PdfWriter.GetInstance(d, stream); /* add an
image as bg*/ iTextSharp.text.
Image jpg = iTextSharp.text.
Image.GetInstance(Server.MapPath("Image/bg.png")); jpg.Alignment = iTextSharp.text.
Image.UNDERLYING; jpg.SetAbsolutePosition(0, 0); //this is the size of my background letter head
image. the size is
in points. this will fit
to A4 size document. jpg.ScaleToFit(595, 842); d.Open(); d.Add(jpg); d.Add(new Paragraph(String.Format("Dear {0} {1},", title, fullname))); d.Add(new Paragraph("\n")); d.Add(new Paragraph(msg)); d.Add(new Paragraph("\n")); d.Add(new Paragraph(String.Format("Administrator"))); d.Close(); } //read the file data byte[] b; using (MemoryMappedViewStream stream = mmf.CreateViewStream()) { BinaryReader rdr = new BinaryReader(stream); b = new byte[mmf.CreateViewStream().Length]; rdr.Read(b, 0, (int)mmf.CreateViewStream().Length); } Response.Clear(); Response.ContentType = "Application/pdf"; Response.BinaryWrite(b); Response.End(); } Press ctrl + f5
to run the application. First I got the user list. Click on the generate pdf icon. The created looks as follows. Summary: Creating pdf document using iTextSharp is easy. You will
get lot of information while surfing the www. Some useful resources and references are mentioned below http://itextsharp.com/ http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/82/iTextSharp-Adding-Text-with-Chunks-Phrases-and-Paragraphs http://somewebguy.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/itextsharp-simplify-your-html-to-pdf-creation/ Hope you enjoyed the article.
