Conversion using IE Rendering

24 Jan 20247 minutes to read

Essential PDF makes use of the Microsoft MSHTML library to convert HTML pages to PDF. The output would like how it is viewed in the Internet Explorer browser.

NOTE

Starting with v20.1.0.x, if you reference Syncfusion HTML converter assemblies from trial setup or from the NuGet feed, you also have to include a license key in your projects. Please refer to this link to know about registering Syncfusion license key in your application to use our components.

Prerequisites

To use the IE rendering engine in the application, the following assemblies or NuGet packages needs to be added as reference to the project.

Assemblies

Syncfusion.Compression.Base.dll
Syncfusion.Pdf.Base.dll
Syncfusion.HtmlConverter.Base.dll
Microsoft.mshtml.dll

NuGet

Platform(s)	NuGet Package
Windows Forms	Syncfusion.HtmlToPdfConverter.IE.WinForms.nupkg
WPF	Syncfusion.HtmlToPdfConverter.IE.Wpf.nupkg
ASP.NET	Syncfusion.HtmlToPdfConverter.IE.AspNet.nupkg
ASP.NET MVC4	Syncfusion.HtmlToPdfConverter.IE.AspNet.Mvc4.nupkg
ASP.NET MVC5	Syncfusion.HtmlToPdfConverter.IE.AspNet.Mvc5.nupkg

NOTE

The above mentioned NuGet packages are available in nuget.org

Converting the URL to a PDF document

To convert the HTTP or HTTPS website to PDF, use the following the code snippet.

C#
VB.NET
//Initialize HTML to PDF converter 

HtmlToPdfConverter htmlConverter = new HtmlToPdfConverter(); 

//Convert HTML to PDF document 

PdfDocument document = htmlConverter.Convert("https://www.google.com");
 
//Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf");

document.Close(true);
'Initialize HTML to PDF converter 

Dim htmlConverter As New HtmlToPdfConverter() 

'Convert HTML to PDF document 

Dim document As PdfDocument = htmlConverter.Convert("https://www.google.com") 

'Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf") 

document.Close(True)

You can download a complete working sample from GitHub.

Converting the HTML string to PDF document

To convert the HTML string to PDF, use the following the code snippet.

baseURL: path of the resources (images, style sheets, scripts.,) used in the input HTML string.

For the below HTML string, the baseURL will be the path of the syncfusion_logo.gif image.

For example, if the above image is in “C:\Temp\HTMLFiles\syncfusion_logo.gif” location then the baseURL will be as below,

baseURL: C:\Temp\HTMLFiles\

C#
VB.NET
HTML
//Initialize HTML to PDF converter 

HtmlToPdfConverter htmlConverter = new HtmlToPdfConverter();

//HTML string and base URL 

string htmlText = "<html><body><img src=\"syncfusion_logo.gif\" alt=\"Syncfusion_logo\" width=\"200\" height=\"70\"><p> Hello World</p></body></html>";

string baseUrl = @"C:/Temp/HTMLFiles/";

//Convert HTML to PDF document 

PdfDocument document = htmlConverter.Convert(htmlText, baseUrl);

//Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf");

document.Close(true);
'Initialize HTML to PDF converter 

Dim htmlConverter As New HtmlToPdfConverter()

'HTML string and base URL 

Dim htmlText As String = "<html><body><img src=""syncfusion_logo.gif"" alt=""Syncfusion_logo"" width=""200"" height=""70""><p> Hello World</p></body></html>"

Dim baseUrl As String = "C:/Temp/HTMLFiles/"

'Convert HTML to PDF document 

Dim document As PdfDocument = htmlConverter.Convert(htmlText, baseUrl)

'Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf")

document.Close(True)
<html>
<body>
<img src="syncfusion_logo.gif" alt="Syncfusion_logo" width="200" height="70">
<p> Hello World</p>
</body>
</html>

You can download a complete working sample from GitHub.

Converting Windows Authenticated web page to PDF document

The webpage you want to convert may protected with windows authentication. IE rendering engine provides support for converting the Windows Authenticated webpage to PDF document by providing the username and password. Refer to the following code snippet,

C#
VB.NET
//Initialize HTML to PDF converter 

HtmlToPdfConverter htmlConverter = new HtmlToPdfConverter();
 
//IE Converter settings 

IEConverterSettings converterSettings = new IEConverterSettings(); 

converterSettings.Username = "username";

converterSettings.Password = "password";

htmlConverter.ConverterSettings = converterSettings; 

//Convert HTML to PDF document 

PdfDocument document = htmlConverter.Convert("https://www.google.com"); 

//Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf"); 

document.Close(true);
'Initialize HTML to PDF converter 

Dim htmlConverter As New HtmlToPdfConverter() 

'IE Converter settings 

Dim converterSettings As New IEConverterSettings() 

converterSettings.Username = "username" 

converterSettings.Password = "password" 

htmlConverter.ConverterSettings = converterSettings 

'Convert HTML to PDF document 

Dim document As PdfDocument = htmlConverter.Convert("https://www.google.com")
 
'Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf") 

document.Close(True)

You can download a complete working sample from GitHub.

Converting with PDFA conformance

IE HTML to PDF converter provides support for converting the web pages to PDF with PDFA1B conformance, which embeds all the fonts into the PDF document. The following code snippet illustrates how to convert HTML pages to PDF document with PDFA1B conformance.

C#
VB.NET
//Initialize HTML to PDF converter

HtmlToPdfConverter htmlConverter = new HtmlToPdfConverter(); 

//IE Converter settings 

IEConverterSettings converterSettings = new IEConverterSettings();
 
//PDFA1B conformance 

converterSettings.IsPDFA1B = true; 

htmlConverter.ConverterSettings = converterSettings; 

//Convert HTML to PDF document 

PdfDocument document = htmlConverter.Convert("https://www.google.com"); 

//Save and close the PDF document 

document.Save("Output.pdf"); 

document.Close(true);
'Initialize HTML to PDF converter
Dim htmlConverter As New HtmlToPdfConverter() 

'IE Converter settings 
Dim converterSettings As New IEConverterSettings()
 
'PDFA1B conformance 
converterSettings.IsPDFA1B = True 

htmlConverter.ConverterSettings = converterSettings 

'Convert HTML to PDF document 
Dim document As PdfDocument = htmlConverter.Convert("https://www.google.com") 

'Save and close the PDF document 
document.Save("Output.pdf") 

document.Close(True)

You can download a complete working sample from GitHub.

Troubleshooting

Issue

The following conditions may occur while converting HTML to PDF by using the IE rendering engine.

Converted PDF document contains content as a Bitmap.
Page break may not be applied in the resultant PDF document.
Text could not be selected in the PDF document.
Converted PDF looks blurry.

Solution

The above issues may occur in the machines with IE9 or later versions installed. As the Internet Explorer version 9 and above supports hardware acceleration, the rendered content would be in the form of Bitmap, where many features are not supported.

To overcome this issue, the key FEATURE_IVIEWOBJECTDRAW_DMLT9_WITH_GDI should be updated in the registry as explained in the link below.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330732(v=vs.85).aspx#iviewobject_draw

Run the legacy drawing utility placed in ($SystemDrive: \Program Files\Syncfusion\Essential Studio\$Version # \Utilities\PDF\Legacy Drawing) to perform the above changes automatically.
While manually changing the registry key, the changes should be done on both HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and HKEY_CURRENT_USER as below.

Name	Type	Data
*	REG_DWORD	0x00000001

Issue	Images or other contents in the HTML are missing in the resultant PDF document
Solution	The issue may be due to the slow Internet connection or due to the behavior that the conversion completed before the URL is loaded completely. To overcome this issue, add suitable delay to the conversion using AdditionalDelay property of the HTMLConverter.

HTML conversion support in Azure
Azure App Service	No
Azure Functions	No
Azure Cloud Service	Yes