How to create a pdf file in C#

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PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that has replicate all the characteristics of a printed document that you can read, write, print or forward to someone else. You can create PDF file programmatically from C# applications very easily. When you create documents, graphics etc. they look just like they would if printed. PDFsharp is the Open Source library that easily creates PDF documents from c# language. PDFSharp library allows you to create PDF files directly from your C# application.

Free PDF Library

There are many PDF libraries available in the web like PDFsharp, iTextSharp etc. The following program uses the PDFsharp library for creating pdf file from C# application.

PDFsharp library

PDFsharp is the Open Source .NET library that easily creates and processes PDF documents on the fly from any .NET language.

Steps to create PDF file programmatically.

1. Download the Assemblies from the above mentioned url.

2. Extract the .zip file to your desired location (filename :PDFsharp-MigraDocFoundation-Assemblies-1_31.zip)

3. Create a New C# Project

4. Add pdfsharp reference in C# Project

5. In Solution Explorer, right-click the project node and click Add Reference. In this project we are using GDI+ libraries.

6. In the Add Reference dialog box, select the BROWSE tab and select the Assembly file location (step 2)
7. Select all files and click OK After you add the reference files to your C# project , solution explorer look like the following image


 Now you can start programming to create a   New PDF document.
 First you should create a PDF document Object

•  PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument();

 Next step is to create a an Empty page.

•  PdfPage pdfPage = pdf.AddPage(); 

 Then create an XGraphics Object

•  XGraphics graph = XGraphics.FromPdfPage(pdfPage);

 Also create the Font object from XFont

•  XFont font = new XFont("Verdana", 20, XFontStyle.Bold); pdf.Save("firstpage.pdf");

 You can specify the file path in the pdf.save function. After save the file , you can double click and open the pdf file. Then you can see the following content in your pdf file.

 using System;  
 using System.Windows.Forms;  
 using System.Diagnostics;  
 using PdfSharp;  
 using PdfSharp.Drawing;  
 using PdfSharp.Pdf;  
 namespace WindowsFormsApplication1  
 {  
   public partial class Form1 : Form  
   {  
     public Form1()  
     {  
       InitializeComponent();  
     }  
     private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)  
     {  
       PdfDocument pdf = new PdfDocument();  
       pdf.Info.Title = "My First PDF";  
       PdfPage pdfPage = pdf.AddPage();  
       XGraphics graph = XGraphics.FromPdfPage(pdfPage);  
       XFont font = new XFont("Verdana", 20, XFontStyle.Bold);  
       graph.DrawString("This is my first PDF document", font, XBrushes.Black, new XRect(0, 0, pdfPage.Width.Point, pdfPage.Height.Point), 
       XStringFormats.Center);  
       string pdfFilename = "firstpage.pdf";  
       pdf.Save(pdfFilename);  
       Process.Start(pdfFilename);  
     }  
   }  
 }