HTML to PDF Conversion with ABCpdf .NET

ABCpdf is great for converting HTML to PDF. It supports HTML 3.2, HTML 4.0 and HTML 5.0 with CSS 3.

Use google Chrome style conversion, or Firefox style conversion or Internet Explorer style conversion. This means that you have a choice of HTML to PDF conversion based around any of the three current mainstream browsers.

ABCpdf treats HTML as a media type so you can place your HTML content anywhere you like on your PDF pages. You can have HTML headers, footers or content - it simply depends on where you tell ABCpdf to place it.

You can place your HTML in one area or you can flow it between areas. You can even have HTML flowed between multiple columns over multiple PDF pages.

ABCpdf takes advantage of CSS page break tags for optimal control over page breaking. It operates simply and easily producing perfect HTML results every time.

ABCpdf lets you import HTML from local or remote sites. You can import ASP, Cold Fusion or indeed any kind of static or dynamic content. You can even generate your HTML and import it directly.

And because this functionality is integrated directly into ABCpdf .NET you get all the power and flexibility of ABCpdf whenever you want to import HTML.

We create an ABCpdf Doc object, add our URL and save. That's it!

// C#
Doc theDoc = new Doc();
theDoc.AddImageUrl("http://www.google.com/");
theDoc.Save(Server.MapPath("htmlimport.pdf"));

' Visual Basic
Dim theDoc As Doc = New Doc()
theDoc.AddImageUrl("http://www.google.com/")
theDoc.Save(Server.MapPath("htmlimport.pdf"))

We get the following output.

htmlimport.pdf

The mechanism we invented for placed HTML content has proved enormously successful. Indeed it has been so successful that a number of other companies have copied it!

However there's more to this kind of functionality than a simple mechanism and as the creators of this approach we have more experience in this area than anyone else. You can see this sophistication in the types of conversion options offered by ABCpdf.

• Three different HTML Engines based on Chrome, Firefox and IE
• Support for modern HTML5, CSS3 and associated standards
• Convert HTML forms to PDF forms
• Convert HTML links to PDF links
• Convert within HTML links (e.g. anchor fragments) to within PDF links
• Convert links between multiple HTML pages in a PDF document to within PDF links
• Insert page breaks using the "page-break-before", "page-break-after" and "page-break-inside" styles
• Avoid page breaks using the "page-break-inside: avoid" style
• Repeated table headers and footers
• WebFont and FontAwesome support
• JavaScript and AJAX support for dealing with dynamic pages
• Tag elements of HTML and determine their location in the output PDF document
• Server-side callback code to modify the HTML DOM before a page is inserted
• Add SVG, Flash and Movies
• Convert Flash to resolution independent vector PDF content
• Full control over font substitution and embedding
• Support for the MHT file format
• Optimized paging for very large HTML documents

If you are comparing like with like then bear these features in mind. Really there is nothing which comes close to ABCpdf.

Is that not enough? Do you still want more?

For an in-depth look at all the technical aspects of HTML conversion using the ABCpdf .NET library please see the Definitive Guide for HTML to PDF C# Conversion...

Since ABCpdf.NET version 12.1 the ABCWebKit HTML conversion engine is available for use in more restrictive sandboxed environments such as Azure App Services. More information can be found in our Azure Deployment Guide.