Proper way to convert HTML to PDF

Question

I want to convert HTML page to PDF. There are several options, but they have some problems.

• Print HTML page in IE through PDFCreator (too cumbersome)
• Use wkhtmltopdf (low quality)
• Use PhantomJS (low quality)

Maybe I can use a complex solution? To print with PhantomJS through PDFCreator, or improve quality of wkhtmltopdf, or maybe something else?

Answer 1

Maybe you can try with Amyuni WebkitPDF. It's not open source, but it's free for commercial use, and it can be used from C#.

Sample code for C# from the documentation:

static private void SaveToFile(string url, string file)
{        
    // Store the WebkitPDFContext returned value in an IntPtr
    IntPtr context = IntPtr.Zero;
    // Open the URL. The WebkitPDFContext returned value will be stored in
    // the passed in IntPtr
    int ret = WKPDFOpenURL(url, out context, 0, false);
    if (ret == 0)
    {
        // if ret is 0, then we succeeded in opening the URL.
        // Save the result as PDF to a file. Use the obtained context value
        ret = WKPDFSaveToFile(file, context);
    }
    if (ret != 0)
        Debug.WriteLine("Failed to run SaveToFile on '" + url + "' to generate file '" + file + "'");
    // Make sure to close the WebkitPDFContext because otherwise the
    // internal PDFCreator as well as other objects will not be released
    WKPDFCloseContext(context);
}

Usual disclaimer applies.

Answer 2

You can properly convert HTML to PDF using GroupDocs.Conversion for .NET API. Have a look at the code:

// Setup Conversion configuration and Initailize ConversionHandler    
ConversionConfig config = new ConversionConfig();    
config.StoragePath = "source file storage path";    
// Initailize ConversionHandler    
ConversionHandler conversionHandler = new ConversionHandler(config);    
// Convert and save converted document    
var convertedDocumentPath = conversionHandler.Convert("sample.html", new PdfSaveOptions{});    
convertedDocumentPath.Save("result-" + Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension("sample.html") + ".pdf");  

Disclosure: I work as Developer Evangelist at GroupDocs.