By Chandra Kudumula
Introduction
This article is about generating PDF documents using C#, .NET, and the iText library. I had a requirement to generate an invoice as a PDF document for one of the projects I worked on. In my research, I came to know about iText. iText is a library for creating and manipulating PDF files in .NET and Java. If you are struggling with C#, consider checking out the TechRepublic Academy.
Prerequisites
- Visual Studio 2017 and above
- .NET Framework, Version 4.0 and above
- Installed iText 7 Library using NuGet Package Manager
Setting Up the Project
Step 1: Create the Console App Using Visual Studio
In Visual Studio, go to File -> New -> Project.
On the “New Project window”, select the Console App(.NET Framework) and give the project a name, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Selecting the Console App(.NET Framework)
Step 2: Install iText 7 Using “Manage NuGet Packages…”
Right-click the project name and select “Manage NuGet Packages…”. You can see this in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Selecting NuGet Packages
Select “Browse” and, in the search box, type itext7 and select itext7 from the searched results and install (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Selecting itext7
Following are the helpful classes and methods to generate the PDF document:
- PdfWriter: To pass the file name and write content to the document.
- PdfDocument: In-memory representation of the PDF document. It will open a PDF document in writing mode.
- Document: Creates a document from in-memory PdfDocument.
- Paragraph: Creates a paragraph, initialized with some text.
- SetFontSize: Sets the font size of the text.
- SetTextAlignment: Sets the text alignment, such as Left, Right, Center, and so forth.
I will add a Header, SubHeader, Line Separator, Image, Table, Hyperlink, and finally page numbers to the PDF document.
A. Adding a Header
Add a header to the PDF document. Header Content is center aligned to the document and I set the font size to 20. We can achieve this by creating a paragraph object. Following is the code snippet to create a paragraph object and add it to the document object. Finally, we need to close the document object by calling the Close() method.
using iText.Kernel.Pdf;
using iText.Layout;
using iText.Layout.Element;
using iText.Layout.Properties;
namespace GeneratePdfDemo
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Must have write permissions to the path folder
PdfWriter writer = new PdfWriter("C:\\demo.pdf");
PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument(writer);
Document document = new Document(pdf);
Paragraph header = new paragraph("HEADER")
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.SetFontSize(20);
document.Add(header);
document.Close();
}
}
}
Run the program and go to the path specified in PdfWriter and open the PDF document. Figure 4 is the image of a PDF document with header text.
Figure 4: Showing the header text
B. Creating a Sub Header
Create a Sub Header with text alignment center and set the font size to 15. Add this Sub Header to the document object, as shown in Figure 5.
Paragraph subheader = new Paragraph("SUB HEADER")
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.SetFontSize(15);
document.Add(subheader);
Figure 5: Creating the Sub Header
C. Adding a Horizontal Separator Line
Add a horizontal line using Line Separator. This is shown in Figure 6.
// Line separator
LineSeparator ls = new LineSeparator(new SolidLine());
document.Add(ls);
Figure 6: Creating the separator line
D. Adding an Image
Add an Image to the PDF document by using an Image instance (see Figure 7).
// Add image
Image img = new Image(ImageDataFactory
.Create(@"..\..\image.jpg"))
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER);
document.Add(img);
Figure 7: Adding an image
E. Creating a Table
Create a Table and add it to the document, as shown in Figure 8.
// Table
Table table = new Table(2, false);
Cell cell11 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetBackgroundColor(ColorConstants.GRAY)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("State"));
Cell cell12 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetBackgroundColor(ColorConstants.GRAY)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Capital"));
Cell cell21 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("New York"));
Cell cell22 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Albany"));
Cell cell31 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("New Jersey"));
Cell cell32 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Trenton"));
Cell cell41 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("California"));
Cell cell42 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Sacramento"));
table.AddCell(cell11);
table.AddCell(cell12);
table.AddCell(cell21);
table.AddCell(cell22);
table.AddCell(cell31);
table.AddCell(cell32);
table.AddCell(cell41);
table.AddCell(cell42);
document.Add(table);
Figure 8: Adding a table
F. Creating a Hyperlink
Create a Hyperlink and add it to the document (see Figure 9).
// Hyper link
Link link = new Link("click here",
PdfAction.CreateURI("https://www.google.com"));
Paragraph hyperLink = new Paragraph("Please ")
.Add(link.SetBold().SetUnderline()
.SetItalic().SetFontColor(ColorConstants.BLUE))
.Add(" to go www.google.com.");
document.Add(newline);
document.Add(hyperLink);
Figure 9: Adding a hyperlink
G. Adding Page Numbers
Add Page numbers at the top right corner of the page, as shown in Figure 10.
// Page numbers
int n = pdf.GetNumberOfPages();
for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++)
{
document.ShowTextAligned(new Paragraph(String
.Format("page" + i + " of " + n)),
559, 806, i, TextAlignment.RIGHT,
VerticalAlignment.TOP, 0);
}
Figure 10: Adding page numbers
Following is the complete code listing.
using iText.IO.Image;
using iText.Kernel.Colors;
using iText.Kernel.Pdf;
using iText.Kernel.Pdf.Action;
using iText.Kernel.Pdf.Canvas.Draw;
using iText.Layout;
using iText.Layout.Element;
using iText.Layout.Properties;
using System;
namespace GeneratePdfDemo
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Must have write permissions to the path folder
PdfWriter writer = new PdfWriter("C:\\test\\demo.pdf");
PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument(writer);
Document document = new Document(pdf);
// Header
Paragraph header = new Paragraph("HEADER")
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.SetFontSize(20);
// New line
Paragraph newline = new Paragraph(new Text("\n"));
document.Add(newline);
document.Add(header);
// Add sub-header
Paragraph subheader = new Paragraph("SUB HEADER")
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.SetFontSize(15);
document.Add(subheader);
// Line separator
LineSeparator ls = new LineSeparator(new SolidLine());
document.Add(ls);
// Add paragraph1
Paragraph paragraph1 = new Paragraph("Lorem ipsum " +
"dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, " +
"sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore " +
"et dolore magna aliqua.");
document.Add(paragraph1);
// Add image
Image img = new Image(ImageDataFactory
.Create(@"..\..\image.jpg"))
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER);
document.Add(img);
// Table
Table table = new Table(2, false);
Cell cell11 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetBackgroundColor(ColorConstants.GRAY)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("State"));
Cell cell12 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetBackgroundColor(ColorConstants.GRAY)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Capital"));
Cell cell21 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("New York"));
Cell cell22 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Albany"));
Cell cell31 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("New Jersey"));
Cell cell32 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Trenton"));
Cell cell41 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("California"));
Cell cell42 = new Cell(1, 1)
.SetTextAlignment(TextAlignment.CENTER)
.Add(new Paragraph("Sacramento"));
table.AddCell(cell11);
table.AddCell(cell12);
table.AddCell(cell21);
table.AddCell(cell22);
table.AddCell(cell31);
table.AddCell(cell32);
table.AddCell(cell41);
table.AddCell(cell42);
document.Add(newline);
document.Add(table);
// Hyper link
Link link = new Link("click here",
PdfAction.CreateURI("https://www.google.com"));
Paragraph hyperLink = new Paragraph("Please ")
.Add(link.SetBold().SetUnderline()
.SetItalic().SetFontColor(ColorConstants.BLUE))
.Add(" to go www.google.com.");
document.Add(newline);
document.Add(hyperLink);
// Page numbers
int n = pdf.GetNumberOfPages();
for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++)
{
document.ShowTextAligned(new Paragraph(String
.Format("page" + i + " of " + n)),
559, 806, i, TextAlignment.RIGHT,
VerticalAlignment.TOP, 0);
}
// Close document
document.Close();
}
}
}
Conclusion
You have seen how to generate the PDF document by using C#, .NET, and the iText library. iText allows lot of customization to PDF documents. I hope this article will help someone who wants to generate PDF documents.
