iTextSharp XMLWorkerHelper HTML to PDF Table Alignment

Question

Using the following ASP.net/iTextSharp code to parse the contents of an HTML file into a PDF and dump it into the response stream:

Response.Clear();
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
using (Document doc = new Document())
{
    PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(doc, Response.OutputStream);
    doc.Open();
    using (TextReader reader = File.OpenText(Server.MapPath("~/Test.htm")))
    {
        XMLWorkerHelper.GetInstance().ParseXHtml(writer, doc, reader);
    }
    doc.Close();
}
Response.End();

This works, but the resulting PDF isn't styled anything like the original HTML page. For starters, the built-in css parser appears to only be able to work with direct tag styles and classes (no chaining like: thead th { background-color:#999; }).

Second, it appears borders are an all-or-nothing deal. It has no concept of border-top, border-bottom, etc, and border-collapse doesn't collapse the borders of adjoining cells so the borders end up being twice as thick as I want them.

Last, I cannot figure out how to align a table to the left- or right-side of the document. It is always centered. I tried wrapping in a div with text-align, tried setting the align attribute, tried setting text-align directly on the table. Can't figure that one out?

Here is my demo document I'm trying to use as a proof-of-concept:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>This is the title</title>
    <meta name="description" content="This is the description" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="abc, 123, xyz" />
    <style type="text/css">
        body { font-family:Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif; font-size:9pt; }
        .dataGrid { font-family:Arial, Verdana, Sans-Serif; font-size:9pt; border-collapse: collapse; border:1px solid #000; width:80%; margin:0; text-align:left; }
        th { padding:3px 4px; font-weight:bold; border:1px solid #000; }
        td { padding:3px 4px; border:1px solid #000; }
        .head { border-bottom:2px solid #000; background-color:#9BBA1F; font-weight:bold; }
        .odd { background-color:#fff; }
        .even { background-color:#D6EB87; }
        .foot { border-top:2px solid #000; background-color:#BAB0C4; font-weight:bold; }
        h1 { font-size:14pt; color:#FFA200; text-align:center; }
        .right { text-align:right; }
        .center { text-align:center; }
        .left { text-align:left; }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Sample Document</h1>

    <div style="text-align:left;">
    <table class="dataGrid" align="left">
        <thead>
            <tr class="head">
                <th width="70%">Name</th>
                <th width="15%" class="center">Qty</th>
                <th width="15%" class="center">Price</th>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <tr class="odd">
                <td>ABC</td>
                <td class="center">2</td>
                <td class="right">$5.00</td>
            </tr>
            <tr class="even">
                <td>XYZ</td>
                <td class="center">1</td>
                <td class="right">$10.00</td>
            </tr>
            <tr class="odd">
                <td>123</td>
                <td class="center">3</td>
                <td class="right">$2.00</td>
            </tr>
            <tr class="even">
                <td>789</td>
                <td class="center">1</td>
                <td class="right">$4.00</td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
        <tfoot>
            <tr class="foot">
                <td class="right">Totals</td>
                <td class="center">7</td>
                <td class="right">$30.00</td>
            </tr>
        </tfoot>
    </table>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

Sam Sam · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-27T13:01:31

After spending a bunch of time on this I couldn't get it to work properly. As such, I ended up switching to another tool: wkHtmlToPdf. I used the Codaxy wrapper class available in Nuget to help create the calls, and am seeing much better results than I saw with iTextSharp. It mostly understands CSS selectors, and automatically handles things like images and links.

iTextSharp XMLWorkerHelper HTML to PDF Table Alignment

1 Answers