Home » Newsletter » June 2012

How To Create PDFs In An ASP.NET MVC Application

Using PDFOne .NET in an MVC3 web application.

By V. Subhash

PDFOne .NET can be used in "Win-Forms" and ASP.NET applications to generate and process PDF documents. You can also use PDFOne in ASP.NET MVC application. In this article, we will see how to use it in a sample ASP.NET MVC 3 web application.

In the following C# example, our MVC3 application will generate a simple HTML form that pretends to be a online money transfer application of a bank. After the form is posted, the application will generate a PDF purportedly containing the details of the transaction and send it down to the browser.

Create a new ASP.NET MVC3 Web Application
- Give the name "BankTransfer" to the solution.
- Use the "Empty" template
In Solution Explorer, add a reference to the Gnostice.PDFOne assembly.

Add a new model named "TransferDetails." This will be our domain model.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;

namespace BankTransfer.Models
{
  public class TransferDetails
  {
    public string PayeeName { get; set; }
    public string AccountNumber { get; set; }
    public string Amount { get; set; }
  }
}

Build the project.
Add a new empty controller named "Home" (HomeController.cs). This will have a built-in Index() action method.
```
public ActionResult Index() {
  return View();
}
```
In the controller, add namespaces for our domain model and the PDFOne assembly.
```
using BankTransfer.Models;
using Gnostice.PDFOne;
```
Add a new strongly-typed view (index.cshtml) linked to our model for this Index() action.

Create a data-entry form for the end-user, as shown below.

@model BankTransfer.Models.TransferDetails

@{
    Layout = null;
}

<html>
<head>
    <title>Bank of Money - Initiate Money Transfer</title>
</head>
<body>
    <div>

    <h1>Initiate Money Transfer</h1>
    @using (Html.BeginForm())
    {
        <p>Enter payee account #: @Html.TextBox("AccountNumber")</p>
        <p>Enter payee name #: @Html.TextBox("PayeeName")</p>
        <p>Enter amount #: @Html.TextBox("Amount")</p>
        <input type="submit" value="Make Transfer" />
    }
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Switch to the controller and add a HttpGet attribute to the existing Index() action method. This will make the controller use the method only to handle simple HTTP GET requests.
```
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult Index()
{
    return View();
}
```

Add the following overloaded Index() action and give it a HttpPost attribute. This will make the controller use this only method to process the "posted" form contents and generate the transaction statement.

[HttpPost]
public void Index(TransferDetails td)
{
  // Create a PDF document
  PDFDocument doc = new PDFDocument("your-license-key");
  doc.WriteText("Bank of Money", 1, 1);
  doc.WriteText("---------------------------------", 1, 1.1f);

  // Render text
  PDFFont fntCourier = new PDFFont(StdType1Font.Courier, 16);

  doc.WriteText("Payee account #   :", fntCourier, 1, 1.4f);
  doc.WriteText("Payee name        :", fntCourier, 1, 1.7f);
  doc.WriteText("Amount transferred:", fntCourier, 1, 2f);
  doc.WriteText("Transaction #     :", fntCourier, 1, 2.3f);
  doc.WriteText("Date and Time #   :", fntCourier, 1, 2.6f);

  doc.WriteText(td.AccountNumber, fntCourier, 4, 1.4f);
  doc.WriteText(td.PayeeName, fntCourier, 4, 1.7f);
  doc.WriteText("Rs. " + td.Amount, fntCourier, 4, 2f);
  doc.WriteText((new Random()).Next(199999, 599999).ToString(), fntCourier, 4, 2.3f);
  doc.WriteText(DateTime.Now.ToString(), fntCourier, 4, 2.7f);

  // Write the document to the browser
  this.Response.Clear();
  this.Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
  doc.Save(this.Response.OutputStream);
  doc.Close();
}

The values that the action method writes to the PDF are bound to the properties of the TransferDetails instance passed to it.

Build the project and run it. This will open a browser and display the form.
Fill up the form and submit it. The application will then display the PDF inside the browser or let you download it.

---o0O0o---

How To Create PDFs In An ASP.NET MVC Application

Using PDFOne .NET in an MVC3 web application.

By V. Subhash

eDocEngine VCL

PDFtoolkit VCL

XtremePDFConverter VCL

PDFOne .NET

XtremeDocumentStudio .NET

PDFOne (for Java™)

XtremeFontEngine (for Java)

Free PDF Reader