Asp.Net MVC how to get view to generate PDF

Question

I would like to call an action on a controller. Have the controller get the data from the model. The view then runs and generates a PDF. The only example I have found i

Answer 1

This is an old question but one that's still relevant and I thought I'd just share what I've implemented which works well.

1. Install NuGet package TuesPechkin - a fork in the Pechkin library based on WkHtmlToPdf that uses a Webkit engine to convert HTML pages to PDF.

2. Write a little helper to read a view and convert it to an HTML string (mvcContext is this.HttpContext). The replace is optional of course!:

   public static string RenderViewToString(HttpContextBase mvcContext, string area, string controllerName, string viewName, object model)
   {
       var context = System.Web.HttpContext.Current;
       var contextBase = mvcContext;
       var routeData = new RouteData();
       if (area == null) area = "";
   
       routeData.DataTokens.Add("area", area);
   
       routeData.Values.Add("controller", controllerName);
   
       var controllerContext = new ControllerContext(contextBase,
                                               routeData,
                                               new EmptyController());
   
       var razorViewEngine = new RazorViewEngine();
       var razorViewResult = razorViewEngine.FindView(controllerContext,
                                                   viewName,
                                                   "",
                                               false);
   
       var writer = new StringWriter();
       var viewContext = new ViewContext(controllerContext,
                                   razorViewResult.View,
                                   new ViewDataDictionary(model),
                                   new TempDataDictionary(),
                                   writer);
       razorViewResult.View.Render(viewContext, writer);
   
       string hostAddress = context.Request.Url.Scheme + "://" + context.Request.Url.Authority;
   
       return writer.ToString()
                    .Replace("src=\"/", "src=\"" + hostAddress + "/")
                    .Replace("

The hard work of the above were from here: http://wouterdekort.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/rendering-aspnet-mvc-view-to-string-in.html?showComment=1414603363455#c7863520150405064571

3. Create an MVC Action to generate the document

   public ActionResult DownloadPDF(long CentreID)
   {
       var model = GetModel()
   
       IPechkin converter = Factory.Create();
       byte[] result = converter.Convert(Helpers.PDF.RenderViewToString(this.HttpContext, "area", "controller", "action", model);
       MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream();
       outputStream.Write(result, 0, result.Length);
       outputStream.Position = 0;
   
       return File(outputStream, "application/pdf", "filename.pdf");
   }