This thread is for discussions of Dynamically Generating PDFs in .NET .

I'm sure this isn't a great place to ask for a resolution to my itextsharp issues, but you seem to be the only person I've stumbled across who might know the answer (I'm sure you're well-aware that there is a serious dearth of documentation and information available about itextsharp otherwise).

We are doing much the same as your post suggests (using itextsharp to fill fields in a pre-defined PDF and send it down to the user user) and we have just about given up on being able to use itextsharp to fill a PDF form textbox with rich-text-encoded text and I was wondering if you might have any suggestions for us.

Acrobat makes it trivial to setup a textbox field in a PDF form to accept RTF content (just set the props on the field to 'use RTF text' in the forms designer) but when we use itextsharp to fill this field with RFT-encoded content, the RTF syntax is reproduced in its entirety with in the textbox in the PDF (e.g., we get '{\rtf\01\hello\etc....}' instead of the text with the formatting applied).

Have you (or anyone else who might view this blog post) ever tried this and come across the same issue?  Other than this, we find itextsharp to be a quite useful tool for systems that need to collect data in one format (e.g., via a web form, a winform, whatever) and then display that back to the user in any pre-conceived format in an organizational-specific paper-form equivalent).

Happy coding to all~!

-Steve B.

Hi there!

I'm newbie in programming/coding. I really need some help regarding pdf's. I have a program that collects data from the server. I have a button that creates excel file and a button that creates a text file. So now my problem is the button that create a pdf result to users and I'm not really sure how to do it. I tried the  C# but I still can't figure out how to use it. And by the way, I'm using VB.net. I tried this code:

Imports System
Imports com.lowagie.text
Imports com.lowagie.text.pdf
Imports System.IO

Public Class Chap0101
    Public Shared Sub Main(ByVal args As String())
        Console.WriteLine("Chapter 1 example 1: Hello World")

        ' step 1: creation of a document-object
        Dim document As New Document()

        ' step 2:
        ' we create a writer that listens to the document
        ' and directs a PDF-stream to a file

        PdfWriter.getInstance(document, New FileStream("Chap0101.pdf", FileMode.Create))

        ' step 3: we open the document
        document.open()

        ' step 4: we add a paragraph to the document
        document.add(New Paragraph("Hello World"))

        ' step 5: we close the document
        document.close()
    End Sub

End Class

It really doesn't do anything on my program.  I really appreciate any suggestions you can give.

polgas

Hi,

 So, to include this in an ASP.net web app, would I need to have Acrobat installed on the Web Server??

thanks

Steve S

SteveDotSchilzATsbcglobalDOTnet

No - you don't need Acrobat at all - just the iTextSharp library.

Hi still having problem with pdf's..I think what I need is a silent printing but it VB not in java...either that or I need to know how itext works with SQL in order for me to retrieve the data...Do you guys know anything about Itext and SQL or silent print in VB? I really appreciate any idea or help that you could give me. Thanks so much in advance.