Export GridView to PDF

Recently I have been trying to generate some reports to PDF file format from ASP. NET2.0 application. There are a lot of open source PDF libraries out there that you can use to export to PDF such as iTextSharp, Gios PDF .NET Library and PDFSharp. You can go to this link to find out more open source PDF libraries in C#.

Later I will show you a working solution on how to export GridView to PDF by using one of the free libraries – iTextSharp.

ITextSharp is a port of the iText open source java library written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. It is a library that allows developers to extend the capabilities of their web server applications with dynamic PDF document generation and generate PDF file on the fly.

Before that, you need to download the iTextSharp library. Here is the download link.

Add in the iTextSharp.dll as a reference into your web application.

Here is my sample of code:

…
using iTextSharp.text;
using iTextSharp.text.pdf;

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  ExportToPDF();
}

private void ExportToPDF()
{
  Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4, 0, 0, 50, 50);
  System.IO.MemoryStream msReport = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

  try {
    // creation of the different writers
    PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, msReport);

    // we add some meta information to the document
    document.AddAuthor("eJuly");
    document.AddSubject("Export to PDF");

    document.Open();

    iTextSharp.text.Table datatable = new iTextSharp.text.Table(7);

    datatable.Padding = 2;
    datatable.Spacing = 0;

    float[] headerwidths = { 6, 20, 32, 18, 8, 8, 8 };
    datatable.Widths = headerwidths;

    // the first cell spans 7 columns
    Cell cell = new Cell(new Phrase("System Users Report", FontFactory.GetFont(FontFactory.HELVETICA, 16, Font.BOLD)));
    cell.HorizontalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_CENTER;
    cell.Leading = 30;
    cell.Colspan = 7;
    cell.Border = Rectangle.NO_BORDER;
    cell.BackgroundColor = new iTextSharp.text.Color(System.Drawing.Color.Gray);
    datatable.AddCell(cell);

    // These cells span 2 rows
    datatable.DefaultCellBorderWidth = 1;
    datatable.DefaultHorizontalAlignment = 1;
    datatable.DefaultRowspan = 2;
    datatable.AddCell("No.");
    datatable.AddCell(new Phrase("Full Name", FontFactory.GetFont(FontFactory.HELVETICA, 14, Font.NORMAL)));
    datatable.AddCell("Address");
    datatable.AddCell("Telephone No.");

    // This cell spans the remaining 3 columns in 1 row
    datatable.DefaultRowspan = 1;
    datatable.DefaultColspan = 3;
    datatable.AddCell("Just Put Anything");

    // These cells span 1 row and 1 column
    datatable.DefaultColspan = 1;
    datatable.AddCell("Col 1");
    datatable.AddCell("Col 2");
    datatable.AddCell("Col 3");

    datatable.DefaultCellBorderWidth = 1;
    datatable.DefaultRowspan = 1;

    for (int i = 1; i < 20; i++) {
      datatable.DefaultHorizontalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_LEFT;
      datatable.AddCell(i.ToString());
      datatable.AddCell("This is my name.");
      datatable.AddCell("I have a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long long address.");
      datatable.AddCell("0123456789");

      datatable.DefaultHorizontalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_CENTER;
      datatable.AddCell("No");
      datatable.AddCell("Yes");
      datatable.AddCell("No");
    }

    document.Add(datatable);
  }
  catch (Exception e) {
    Console.Error.WriteLine(e.Message);
  }

  // we close the document
  document.Close();

  Response.Clear();
  Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment;filename=Export.pdf");
  Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
  Response.BinaryWrite(msReport.ToArray());
  Response.End();
}

Hope these codes can help those people who are new to asp.net developing and save some time on their searching solutions. You can also find the tutorial of iTextSharp at here.

Happy Programming!