Convert ASPX to PDF format

Question

I have several ASPX web forms which contain all kinds of text boxes, combo boxes, radio button lists, and a lot of other fancy telerik controls. After a form is filled out it needs to be converted to PDF and then printed. I tried wkhtmltopdf but the text boxes in the output were all empty. I have also tried iTextSharp but can't seem to get rid of the InvalidCastException from HTMLWorker.Parse(). I tried the Essential Objects trial version of EO.PDF which worked perfectly except that it would cost lots of money to purchase and probably isn't worth it. I seem to find a lot of examples that are only basic html to pdf converters and won't work with controls. It also seems like many use GridView or similar for iTextSharp, but I don't know much about gridView or if it would help me here.

I need a ideas to try or possibly a solution to my problems with iTextSharp or wkhtmltopdf. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The fields are coming out blank because the filled-out information is not part of the HTML structure of the code. The browser shows it, but wkhtmltopdf cannot see it.

Easy work-around:

1. On form submission, save the submitted values somewhere.

2. Generate a new HTML page using the same code as the form page.

3. Pre-fill the form's HTML with the values you saved in Step 1. Eg specify the value attributes on the form with the submitted data:

    <input type="text" name="customer_name" value="John Doe"> 

wkhtmltopdf can now render the form with the values hard-coded in the HTML.