Best way to create PDF from XML XSLT in C#

Question

I have a requirement to crate a PDF of XML Records. I think there is no way to directly create pdf from xml but using XSLT or XSL FO i believe it can be done. I have been reading lots of articles searching for the good way to do that using C#.

--> What's the best approach of during this? any example would really be great.

My Scenario:

I have XML that looks like:

<Products>
  <Brand name="Test">
    <Quantity value="2/>
     <Price value="$20"/>
  </Brand>
  <Brand name="Test2">
    <Quantity value="3/>
     <Price value="$30"/>
  </Brand>
  <Brand name="Test3">
    <Quantity value="4/>
     <Price value="$40"/>
  </Brand>
</Products>

How can i create a pdf that will have a table showing all this information?

I know there are lots of similar questions like this but most of them are outdated. Any help really appreciated.

Answer 1

In the past I've used a commercial library called Ibex PDF Creator to generate PDF documents from XML data using the XSL-FO standard that has worked really well.

Here's an example of how I would use it:

XML data:

<DocumentRoot>
    <!-- Some content -->
</DocumentRoot>

XSL-FO layout:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="/DocumentRoot">
        <fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:ibex="http://www.xmlpdf.com/2003/ibex/Format">
            <ibex:properties
                title="Some document"
                subject=""
                author=""
                keywords=""
                creator="" />
            <fo:layout-master-set>
                <fo:simple-page-master master-name="A4" page-width="210mm" page-height="297mm">
                    <fo:region-body margin-bottom="1cm" margin-top="3cm"/>
                    <fo:region-before extent="20mm"/>
                    <fo:region-after extent="8mm"/>
                    <fo:region-start extent="1mm"/>
                    <fo:region-end extent="1mm"/>
                </fo:simple-page-master>
            </fo:layout-master-set>
        </<fo:root>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Generating the PDF document in .NET:

var data = new MemoryStream(dataBytes);
var layout = new MemoryStream(layoutBytes);
var pdf = new MemoryStream();

// Using the Ibex PDF Creator .NET API
var doc = new FODocument();
doc.generate(data, layout, pdf);

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

I used the Apache Fop.bat in a method like this. (using System.Diagnostics)

    private void XML_TO_PDF_VIA_FOP(String xmlName, String xsltName, String pdfName) 
    { 
      String batchFile = "XSLT\\FOPv1\\fop.bat";    
      String xmlFile = xmlName;
      String xsltFile = "XSLT\\" + xsltName; 
      String pdfFile = pdfName; 
      Process.Start(batchFile, " -xml " + xmlFile + " -xsl " + xsltFile + " -pdf " + pdfFile); 
    }