HTML to PDF using iTextSharp Library In ASP.NET - html

Question

I have a scenario where i want to convert Html Template to pdf using iTextSharp.Html Template is situated in the below location
Server.MapPath("~/Template/CertificateMailTemplate.html")
This is the below code I have tried
public string SendCertificate()
{
try
{
byte[] outputstream = null;
using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
using (var document = new Document())
{
using (var writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, stream))
{
document.Open();
using (var html = new StringReader(Server.MapPath("~/Template/CertificateMailTemplate.html")))
{
XMLWorkerHelper.GetInstance().ParseXHtml(writer, document, html);
}
}
}
outputstream = stream.ToArray();
}
//Mail sending code
return "success";
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
return ex.Message;
}
finally
{
if (reader != null)
{
reader.Dispose();
}
}
}
Here I am getting the following error The document has no pages.
Any help will be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

The ParseXHtml method takes a TextReader as the third parameter and Microsoft provides two main implementations of that class, the StringReader and the StreamReader.
The StringReader (which you are using) is for when you want to take an existing .Net string and read it as a sequence of characters.
The StreamReader (which you should switch to) is for when you want to a byte source (such as a file) and read that as a sequence of characters.
You are passing a string such as "c:\blah\blah\blah.hthml" and iTextSharp is interpreting that as your HTML and not your path to your HTML.
If you want .Net to take a wild guess at the encoding of the file you can swap your code one-for-one using the constructor StreamReader(String). If you know the specific encoding of the file you can use one of the overloads such as StreamReader(String, Encoding).
So, this line:
//Incorrect
using (var html = new StringReader(Server.MapPath("~/Template/CertificateMailTemplate.html")))
Should instead be:
//Correct
using (var html = new StreamReader(Server.MapPath("~/Template/CertificateMailTemplate.html")))