Convert a HTML Control (Div or Table) to an image using C#

Question

Is it possible to convert a Html Control to an image in C#?

Is there any C# method where I can pass the Html Control object and return an image of that html control?

Answer 1

The control you're describing has, as its output, HTML. That's all it does.

Your problem is that you want to turn a snippet of HTML into an image. Rendering HTML is done by a browser - ASP.NET has basically nothing to do with how HTML is rendered by a client.

Most .NET libraries that do this job (turning HTML into images) use IE to power the conversion. Some of those utilities include:

1. Websites Screenshot - http://www.websitesscreenshot.com/
2. The aforementioned htmlsnapshot - http://www.guangmingsoft.net/htmlsnapshot/help.htm
3. Basically any HTML -> PDF library has this functionality, including ABCPdf - http://www.websupergoo.com/abcpdf-1.htm

But the more basic answer to the question is that ASP.NET controls don't render to an image format. You'll have to do an IE screenshot of a page that has only that control (or HTML) on it.