Server side PDF creation – Recommendations?

18 Comments

• Good results and performance with iTextSharp. Not so much experience with PDFSharp buts seems to work fine also.
  

• Hi, www.aspose.com have some excellent, high quality tools. Depends a lot on what you are trying to do (and your budget), but they are well worth a look.
  
  I have no direct connection with them, other than being a satisfied customer.
  
  Best regards
  Steve
  

• You can use the itextsharp library.
  

• Used pdflib on a large-scale project. It has everything you need in generating pdf..
  

• IF you have office 2007 on the server (rare), and you can automate it, then this is the best way in my opinion based on so many tires of different options.
  
  Also, so many people have been happy using ABCpdfcomponent, if you are OK with paying for it.
  
  There is iTextSharp open source libaray. If you need HTML template (or so) it's very basic one though, otherwise if you create entire PDF by code maybe it's OK.
  
  Also, if you are fine with creating XSL templates, you can earch for XSL-FO wa of creating PDF. Hard thing in my opinion still.
  

• ItextSharp if open source is your thing. The HTML parser is a bit hard to work with though.
  
  ABCPDF is also popular - and my team says it handles HTML pretty well.
  

• I've used iTextSharp which was pretty good:
  
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/
  
  Are you creating the PDF files from scratch or converting an existing document?
  

• Did you try using iTEXTSharp? It has rich components to generate pdf on the fly.
  

• pdfsharp.sf.net
  itextsharp.sf.net
  

• I am using iTextSharp, It's very good library in my opinion. I also used syncfusion, but it costs money. So for my current project I am using iTextSharp.
  
  By the way, have a look in Microsoft reporting, it has ability to pdf, excel creation (for example reports).
  

• I recommend the recession friendly itextsharp. Never had any issues. Using it to deliver over a thousand pdfs a day.
  

• I have used iTextSharp in the past. It is good.
  
  Have a look at .NET ReportServer control. This works similar to MS SQL Reporting Services. You can create pdf, excel files. Using this means no third party dependency.
  
  Just my 2 cents.
  

• You can use Microsoft Reports, built-in with Visual Studio (thus it's free).
  

• I'm pretty sure the last one I used was from aspose; no issues, I would definitely use it again.
  

• 
  You could use the built in RDLC
  
  http://weblogs.asp.net/rajbk/archive/2006/03/02/How-to-render-client-report-definition-files-_28002E00_rdlc_2900_-directly-to-the-Response-stream-without-preview.aspx
  
  
  Regards,
  Raj
  

• Well, I can NOT recommend ABCpdf... Memory problems amongst other things.
  Decided to write in-house.
  

• I recommend www.aspose.com
  

• In terms of performance and features, ABCpdf... It's also a mature product of commercial quality. I've been using it for a number of years and haven't encountered the memory problems Damon mentioned, none that were not my own fault that is. On the few occasions I have needed to contact developer support, webSupergoo have always been very responsive. And the standard edition can be obtained for free ;-)