How to render an ASP.NET MVC View in PDF format

Question

I'm working with ExpertPDF's Html-to-PDF conversion utility for this question (although I'm open to other libraries if there's sufficient documentation).

In short, I have a view that is formatted a specific way and I would like to render it as a PDF document the user can save to disk.

What I have so far is a PrintService (which implements an IPrintService interface) and this implementation has two overloads for PrintToPDF(), one that takes just a URL and another that takes an HTML string, and both of which return a byte[]. I've only worked out the details of the second overload which requires the HTML string.

What I would like to do from my controller is something like:

public FileStreamResult Print(int id)
{
    var model = _CustomRepository.Get(id);
    string renderedView = SomethingThatRendersMyViewAsAString(model);
    Stream byteStream = _PrintService.PrintToPdf(renderedView);
    HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", 
        "attachment; filename=report.pdf");
    return new FileStreamResult(byteStream, "application/pdf");  
}

which in theory would render a PDF to the page. It's the "SomethingThatRendersMyViewAsAString" that I'm looking for help with. Is there a quick way to get the string representation of a View? Or perhaps I should just stick with the URL overload and pass in a URL to the view... Any other thoughts?

Thanks!

mannish - were you ever able to post your solution to this anywhere?? it would be increadibly useful. tia — jim tollan
– jim tollan, Commented Mar 8, 2011 at 10:41

Giorgio Bozio · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-22 09:55:08Z

104

+250

I packaged my solution in a Nuget package: Rotativa http://nuget.org/packages/Rotativa. It's based on wkhtmltopdf.

Usage is really simple.

Having an action you would like to serve as Pdf, instead of Html page. You can define an action that returns an ActionResult of the type ActionAsPdf (RouteAsPdf is also available). So the code is just:

public ActionResult PrintIndex()
{
    return new ActionAsPdf("Index", new { name = "Giorgio" }) { FileName = "Test.pdf" };
}

With name = "Giorgio" being a route parameter.

It works even if the action to print is protected by web forms authentication ([Authorize] attribute)

answered Feb 22, 2012 at 9:55

Giorgio Bozio

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26 Comments

Hector Minaya Over a year ago

this is by far the easiest solution I have come across for asp.net mvc, thanks a lot...

Mark Carpenter Over a year ago

This is fantastic - thank you! I'll note that I had to specify the forms authentication cookie name (otherwise the login page would be rendered) and change the renderer to use print media styles (FormsAuthenticationCookieName = "MyCookie", CustomSwitches = "--print-media-type"). Very easy!

detay Over a year ago

Rotativa seems to fail with MVC4. When I return an ActionAsPdf I see a string displayed on the screen instead of a PDF.

Giorgio Bozio Over a year ago

Works in Azure Web Roles but doesn't work on Azure Web Sites because of limitations to the trust level.

SAR Over a year ago

@GuruprasadRao , it's resulting wiht login page on pdf

|

J Wynia · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-18 18:22:06Z

10

You might be able to tap into the Response during OnResultExecuting and replace the Filter property with something that stores the resultant HTML in a MemoryStream. Then you could clear the Response during OnResultExecuted and replace it with the results of your PDF conversion. I'm not sure that this would be better than just getting the HTML from the URL, though.

 public FileStreamResult Print(int id)
 {
     var model = _CustomRepository.Get(id);
     this.ConvertToPDF = true;
     return View( "HtmlView" );
 }

 public override OnResultExecuting( ResultExecutingContext context )
 {
      if (this.ConvertToPDF)
      {
          this.PDFStream = new MemoryStream();
          context.HttpContext.Response.Filter = new PDFStreamFilter( this.PDFStream );
      }
 }

 public override OnResultExecuted( ResultExecutedContext context )
 {
      if (this.ConvertToPDF)
      {
          context.HttpContext.Response.Clear();
          this.PDFStream.Seek( 0, SeekOrigin.Begin );
          Stream byteStream = _PrintService.PrintToPDF( this.PDFStream );
          StreamReader reader = new StreamReader( byteStream );
          context.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader( "content-disposition",
                 "attachment; filename=report.pdf" );
          context.HttpContext.Response.AddHeader( "content-type",
                 "application/pdf" );
          context.HttpContext.Response.Write( reader.ReadToEnd() );
      }
}

The PDFStreamFilter would need to override the "Write" method(s) and send the data to the memory stream instead.

edited Jul 18, 2012 at 18:22

J Wynia

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answered Aug 24, 2009 at 21:03

tvanfosson

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1 Comment

nkirkes Over a year ago

I got a solution worked out that resulted in less code, but the answer you provided was a potential solution. Good idea to intercept the Result execution... I'll post my solution soon.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:18:05Z

1

This sounds like a similar problem I had where I wanted to use Views as email templates. The best answer I found for getting the string representation of a View was here: Render a view as a string

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:18

CommunityBot

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answered Aug 27, 2009 at 19:37

Jason

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1 Comment

nkirkes Over a year ago

I saw that post. I ended up using a similar solution, based on a comment on the brightmix post. I'll post the solution soon.

Leonel Sanches da Silva · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-14 21:27:36Z

0

The best package I've found is the RazorPDF, available as a package at NuGet.org, based on iTextSharp. Works on Azure Web Sites:

https://nuget.org/packages/RazorPDF

answered Jul 14, 2013 at 21:27

Leonel Sanches da Silva

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