Calling wkhtmltopdf to generate PDF from HTML

user_29941 0
Viewed 73449

I'm attempting to create a PDF file from an HTML file. After looking around a little I've found: wkhtmltopdf to be perfect. I need to call this .exe from the ASP.NET server. I've attempted:

    Process p = new Process();
    p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
    p.StartInfo.FileName = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("wkhtmltopdf.exe");
    p.StartInfo.Arguments = "TestPDF.htm TestPDF.pdf";
    p.Start();
    p.WaitForExit();

With no success of any files being created on the server. Can anyone give me a pointer in the right direction? I put the wkhtmltopdf.exe file at the top level directory of the site. Is there anywhere else it should be held?

Edit: If anyone has better solutions to dynamically create pdf files from html, please let me know.

wkhtmltopdf pdf-generation pdf asp.net html
11 Answers

You can tell wkhtmltopdf to send it's output to sout by specifying "-" as the output file. You can then read the output from the process into the response stream and avoid the permissions issues with writing to the file system.

Graham_Ambrose_683780

My take on this with 2018 stuff.

I am using async. I am streaming to and from wkhtmltopdf. I created a new StreamWriter because wkhtmltopdf is expecting utf-8 by default but it is set to something else when the process starts.

I didn't include a lot of arguments since those varies from user to user. You can add what you need using additionalArgs.

I removed p.WaitForExit(...) since I wasn't handling if it fails and it would hang anyway on await tStandardOutput. If timeout is needed, then you would have to call Wait(...) on the different tasks with a cancellationtoken or timeout and handle accordingly.

public async Task<byte[]> GeneratePdf(string html, string additionalArgs)
{
    ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo
    {
        FileName = @"C:\Program Files\wkhtmltopdf\wkhtmltopdf.exe",
        UseShellExecute = false,
        CreateNoWindow = true,
        RedirectStandardInput = true,
        RedirectStandardOutput = true,
        RedirectStandardError = true,
        Arguments = "-q -n " + additionalArgs + " - -";
    };

    using (var p = Process.Start(psi))
    using (var pdfSream = new MemoryStream())
    using (var utf8Writer = new StreamWriter(p.StandardInput.BaseStream, 
                                             Encoding.UTF8))
    {
        await utf8Writer.WriteAsync(html);
        utf8Writer.Close();
        var tStdOut = p.StandardOutput.BaseStream.CopyToAsync(pdfSream);
        var tStdError = p.StandardError.ReadToEndAsync();

        await tStandardOutput;
        string errors = await tStandardError;

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(errors)) { /* deal/log with errors */ }

        return pdfSream.ToArray();
    }
}

Things I haven't included in there but could be useful if you have images, css or other stuff that wkhtmltopdf will have to load when rendering the html page:

  • you can pass the authentication cookie using --cookie
  • in the header of the html page, you can set the base tag with href pointing to the server and wkhtmltopdf will use that if need be
user_4134640

Thanks for the question / answer / all the comments above. I came upon this when I was writing my own C# wrapper for WKHTMLtoPDF and it answered a couple of the problems I had. I ended up writing about this in a blog post - which also contains my wrapper (you'll no doubt see the "inspiration" from the entries above seeping into my code...)

Making PDFs from HTML in C# using WKHTMLtoPDF

Thanks again guys!

user_7613880 
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Web;

public partial class pdftest : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

    }
    private void fn_test()
    {
        try
        {
            string url = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri;
            Response.Write(url);
            ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
            startInfo.FileName = 
                @"C:\PROGRA~1\WKHTML~1\wkhtmltopdf.exe";//"wkhtmltopdf.exe";
            startInfo.Arguments = url + @" C:\test"
                 + Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + ".pdf";
            Process.Start(startInfo);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            string xx = ex.Message.ToString();
            Response.Write("<br>" + xx);
        }
    }
    protected void btn_test_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        fn_test();
    }
}
user_2677870
Related