How to return PDF to browser in MVC?

user_104849 0
Viewed 235463

I have this demo code for iTextSharp

    Document document = new Document();
    try
    {
        PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, new FileStream("Chap0101.pdf", FileMode.Create));

        document.Open();

        document.Add(new Paragraph("Hello World"));

    }
    catch (DocumentException de)
    {
        Console.Error.WriteLine(de.Message);
    }
    catch (IOException ioe)
    {
        Console.Error.WriteLine(ioe.Message);
    }

    document.Close();

How do I get the controller to return the pdf document to the browser?

EDIT:

Running this code does open Acrobat but I get an error message "The file is damaged and could not be repaired"

  public FileStreamResult pdf()
    {
        MemoryStream m = new MemoryStream();
        Document document = new Document();
        PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, m);
        document.Open();
        document.Add(new Paragraph("Hello World"));
        document.Add(new Paragraph(DateTime.Now.ToString()));
        m.Position = 0;

        return File(m, "application/pdf");
    }

Any ideas why this does not work?

itextsharp pdf asp.net-mvc asp.net c#
11 Answers

FileStreamResult certainly works. But if you look at the Microsoft Docs, it inherits from ActionResult -> FileResult, which has another derived class FileContentResult. It "sends the contents of a binary file to the response". So if you already have the byte[], you should just use FileContentResult instead.

public ActionResult DisplayPDF()
{
    byte[] byteArray = GetPdfFromWhatever();

    return new FileContentResult(byteArray, "application/pdf");
}
user_42711170

I know this question is old but I thought I would share this as I could not find anything similar.

I wanted to create my views/models as normal using Razor and have them rendered as Pdfs.

This way I had control over the pdf presentation using standard html output rather than figuring out how to layout the document using iTextSharp.

The project and source code is available here with nuget installation instructions:

https://github.com/andyhutch77/MvcRazorToPdf

Install-Package MvcRazorToPdf
user_18336120 
HttpContext.Response.AddHeader("content-disposition","attachment; filename=form.pdf");

if the filename is generating dynamically then how to define filename here, it is generating through guid here.

user_93202550

if you return var-binary data from DB to display PDF on popup or browser means follow this code:-

View page:

@using (Html.BeginForm("DisplayPDF", "Scan", FormMethod.Post))
    {
        <a href="javascript:;" onclick="document.forms[0].submit();">View PDF</a>
    }

Scan controller:

public ActionResult DisplayPDF()
        {
            byte[] byteArray = GetPdfFromDB(4);
            MemoryStream pdfStream = new MemoryStream();
            pdfStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
            pdfStream.Position = 0;
            return new FileStreamResult(pdfStream, "application/pdf");
        }

        private byte[] GetPdfFromDB(int id)
        {
            #region
            byte[] bytes = { };
            string constr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Connection"].ConnectionString;
            using (SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(constr))
            {
                using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand())
                {
                    cmd.CommandText = "SELECT Scan_Pdf_File FROM PWF_InvoiceMain WHERE InvoiceID=@Id and Enabled = 1";
                    cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Id", id);
                    cmd.Connection = con;
                    con.Open();
                    using (SqlDataReader sdr = cmd.ExecuteReader())
                    {
                        if (sdr.HasRows == true)
                        {
                            sdr.Read();
                            bytes = (byte[])sdr["Scan_Pdf_File"];
                        }
                    }
                    con.Close();
                }
            }

            return bytes;
            #endregion
        }
user_75144110
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