View PDF document in new browser tab - c#

I am trying to open pdf in a new tab using Asp.net mvc controller.
it is opening in new tab correctly but the document name is not showing
here is my code
public ActionResult ViewDocument()
{
byte[] docFileArr=......
var cntdn = new System.Net.Mime.ContentDisposition
{
FileName = DocumentName,
Inline = true,
};
Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", cntdn .ToString());
return File(docFileArr, "application/pdf");
}
the document opening in new window correctly but it showing the controller name only not the document name. please see the attachment.
thanks in advance for help

One way to achieve this is to set the title in the metadata of the PDF (either during creation of the PDF or manipulating it, before the download begins). This has been covered by the already given SO questions.
Another approach is to open a new tab, load an own HTML page generated by an ASP.NET MVC View there, which itsself embeds the PDF file, provided by the ViewDocument action (a more appropriate name would be DownloadDocument).
The HTML page would have a Title in its HTML header, that would be shown by the browser. E.g. the view can look like (just to give the idea):
#{
Layout = null;
}
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html height="100%">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>#Model.Caption</title>
<script src="/js/pdfobject.js"></script>
<style>
.pdfobject-container {
height: 96vh;
width: 99vw;
}
</style>
</head>
<body height="100%">
<div id="pdf" height="100%"></div>
<script>PDFObject.embed("#Model.DownloadUrl", "#pdf");</script>
</body>
</html>
It uses the PDObject.js library to make PDF embedding easier and less error prone.

Web browser actually use metadata included in the PDF files in order to display the title. That way, your file will have the same title without any regards to how it's loaded (from your .NET app, from the desktop after download, etc.).
See this article on how to view and edit metadata from Adobe, using Acrobat: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/pdf-properties-metadata.html

Related

How to generate page footer for a PDF with dynamic content generated using Rotativa

I am generating a pdf, and my employer asked me to add a footer to every single page in the pdf. The pdf gets generated with Rotativa, with a html page that turns into a pdf.
My only problem is, how am i gonna do this. I thought about some ideas, plain css code, although there are more then enough options, none of them really worked out for me. Especially because i can have 1 page, or i can have 10, depends on the amount of information that has to be put onto it.
So the footer has to be responsive to the amount of pages that will be generated.
Does anyone have any ideas for me? I want to get this worked out really bad, but i just have no clue how to.
Greetings
Lorenzo Otto
If I have not misunderstood your question, you could simply use an HTML page as a footer, to display the page footer, involving some javascript to display the current page and total number of pages. I'am actually using this approach for several web applications using Rotativa that generate PDF files based on MVC views with dynamic content.
Supposing we create a Footer.html (use the name you prefer here), this could be the HTML file for the PDF footer, including javascript code to generate page number info:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script>
function subst() {
var vars = {};
var x = window.location.search.substring(1).split('&');
for (var i in x) { var z = x[i].split('=', 2); vars[z[0]] = unescape(z[1]); }
var x = ['frompage', 'topage', 'page', 'webpage', 'section', 'subsection', 'subsubsection'];
for (var i in x) {
var y = document.getElementsByClassName(x[i]);
for (var j = 0; j < y.length; ++j) y[j].textContent = vars[x[i]];
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="subst()">
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size:0.75rem; text-align: right; width:100%;">
<span class="page"></span> / <span class="topage"></span>
</div>
</body>
</html>
*For sure, you can change the footer div style as you wish, in order to suit your desing needs.
And on the other side, guessing the footer HTML page (called Footer.html before) is located in a folder called Shared, inside Views folder, you could this to prepare the required custom switches before calling Rotativa:
string customSwitches = "--footer-html " + Server.MapPath("~/Views/Shared/Footer.html");
So, if you are using an MVC action to generate a PDF based on a View called MyPdfView.cshtml, you can make uso of ViewAsPdf, passing it your custom switches, this way:
return new ViewAsPdf("MyPdfView")
{
FileName = "MyPdfView.pdf",
CustomSwitches = customSwitches
};
And that's all. Please let me know if this worked for you.

Navigating trough objects of a web page, using an embedded web browser

I have a Windows Forms application that uses a WebBrowser control to display an embedded web page. The file is (successfully) loaded using:
webHelp.DocumentStream=
Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()
.GetManifestResourceStream("MyAssembly.help.html");
In order for this to work (i.e. the file to be loaded/displayed) I set the webHelp.AllowNavigation = false;. I don't fully understand why, but if it's set to true, the page is not displayed.
In my HTML document (see bellow) I want to be able to navigate trough different sections. But when I click on a link, the browser control does not go to the targeted element. The web page works fine in the stand-alone Internet Explorer 10, so it must have something to do with the control, more specifically the AllowNavigation property. MSDN didn't help much.
How can I achieve this navigation behavior? Is there another way of loading the HTML file without setting the AllowNavigation property to false?
This is my simple HTML file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<title>Using this tool</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3>Description</h3>
<div><p id="contents">Contents</p></div>
<div>
<p id="general">Using the file converter</p>
<p>*converter description*</p>
Go To Top!
</div>
<div class="divBlock" >
<p id="selectOption">Selecting a conversion action</p>
<p>*action selection*</p>
Go To Top!
</div>
</body>
</html>
EDIT: After additional tests I found the root of the problem. The problem appeared after setting a value for the URL property, running the application and afterwards clearing this value. The embedded page is not loaded any more, unless the AllowNavigation property is set to false. There are two solutions, described in my answer bellow.
I also have my own WebBrowser. I've tested it and it loads your HTML file perfectly.
I simply used:
webBrowser1.Navigate("C:\\myPath\\SofNavigate.html");
When I click on links it goes to "#contents" without problems.
I am not sure why you need to use webHelp.Docstream instead of simple Navigate.
By the way, when I turn off navivation, then I am not able to go anywhere from the page that I started on. So Navigation must be on in order to go anywhere from the "home page".
Try to debug that part, as it appears to be the bigger problem that you have.
Here is a good example on how to set up simple webBrowser. Try to use it as a base and see what you do differently that messes up your navigation.
[EDITED] Win8/IE10, your code works for me unmodified inside Form.Load event on a simple form which has just a single WebBrowser control with all default settings (and WebBrowser.AllowNavigation is true by default). Check the properties of your WebBrowser control in the Designer, you may have something wrong in there.
[/EDITED]
You're using HTML5, which handles anchor links via id attribute (i.e. <p id="contents"> ... <a href="#contents">. By default, WebBrowser control works in legacy IE7 mode with HTML5 disabled. You need to turn it on with FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION feature control, before WebBrowser object gets created. The best place to do this is a static constructor of your form:
static MainForm()
{
SetBrowserFeatureControl();
}
private static void SetBrowserFeatureControl()
{
// http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee330730(v=vs.85).aspx#browser_emulation
// FeatureControl settings are per-process
var fileName = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName);
// make sure the control is not running inside Visual Studio Designer
if (String.Compare(fileName, "devenv.exe", true) == 0 || String.Compare(fileName, "XDesProc.exe", true) == 0)
return;
// web pages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in Standards mode
using (var key = Registry.CurrentUser.CreateSubKey(
#"Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION",
RegistryKeyPermissionCheck.ReadWriteSubTree))
{
key.SetValue(fileName, (UInt32)9000, RegistryValueKind.DWord);
}
}
Try it and your links should work as expected. This solution does NOT require admin rights, the affected key is under HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
[UPDATE] There may be a better solution, it works at least for IE10 here on my side. Add <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" /> as below and leave the registry intact. If you see document.compatMode: CSS1Compat, document.documentMode: 10, you should be good to go, but test with older IE versions too.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
<title></title>
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function () {
info.firstChild.data =
"document.compatMode: " + document.compatMode +
", document.documentMode: " + document.documentMode;
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<pre id="info"> </pre>
</body>
</html>
EDIT: After finding the cause of the problem (see the edit to the question) I can now propose three solutions:
1. WebBrowser control replacement:
Simply delete the existing WebBrowser control and add a new one. This solution does not require any modification of the AllowNavigation property. DO NOT modify the URL property.
2. When deleting and adding a new WebBrowser control is not an option:
Since the AllowNavigation property was influencing the loading and displaying of the web page, there was no reason for it to be left to false afterwards. Setting back the property in the Shown event solved the navigation problem, without requiring other alterations (e.g. in the HTML file or the Registry):
private void helpForm_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
webHelp.AllowNavigation = true;
}
3. Reseting the Document
It seams that the Document property gets (automatically) initialized if URL property is at one time set and reset. Adding webHelp.Document.OpenNew(true); before loading the resource stream solves the problem without the need for re-adding the WebBrowser and without modifying the AllowNavigation property.

How to embed image inside HTML (not using LinkedResource or CDO)

Here is situation:
I want to create HTML document with embeded image something like this:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<img src="?" />
</body>
</html>
Where "?" could somehow point to embeded image data. Maybe if javascript could decode base64 string generated by .net it could get me closer to my goal...
This document is generated on the fly and submited to document system. So I can not use any external link to the image using LinkedResource.
You should check out the MHTML format. It is used to combine HTML with embedded resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML
Make sure to take a look at the browsers supporting the format.
Here is some good link for generating mhtlm:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/8268/Convert-any-URL-to-a-MHTML-archive-using-native-NE

How to edit a pdf in the browser and save it to the server

Here are the requirements, the users needs to be able to view uploaded PDFs in the browser. They need to be able to add notes to the PDF and save the updated PDF to the server without having to save it to their machine and open it outside the browser.
Any ideas on how to achieve this are welcomed.
by the way I am working with an asp.net website (in C#).
I have no control over what the pdf looks like. It is uploaded client-side then other users need to view and an notes on top of the pdf.
The solution that I was thinking is to render the PDF to a jpeg and use javascript to plot coordinates of where the note should go.
here is a quick example of the html and javascript that create the json of note (using jQuery.)
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
<style type="text/css">
*
{
margin:0;
padding:0;
}
#PDF
{
position:absolute;
top:0;
bottom:0;
width:600px;
height:800px;
background:url(assets/images/gray.png) repeat;
float:left;
}
#results
{
float:right;
}
.comment
{
position:absolute;
border:none;
background-color:Transparent;
height:300px;
width:100px;
overflow:auto;
float:left;
top:0;
right:0;
font-family: Arial;
font-size:12px;
}
div.comment
{
padding-top:-20px;
}
.comment a.button
{
display:block;
padding-top:-20px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<div id="PDF"></div>
<div id="results">
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
<script type="text/javascript" src="script/jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var points = [];
$("#PDF").click(function(e) {
if ($("textarea.comment").length == 0) {
var that = this;
var txt = $("<textarea class='comment'></textarea>").css({ top: e.pageY, left: e.pageX }).blur(function() { $(this).remove(); }).keypress(function(e2) {
if (e2.keyCode == 13 && !e.shiftKey) {
var that2 = this;
$("#PDF").append($("<div class='comment'>").html(that2.value.replace(/\r/gi, "<br>")).css({ top: e.pageY, left: e.pageX }));
$(this).remove();
points.push({ "x": e.pageX, "y": e.pageY, "text": that2.value })
$("#results").append('{ "x": ' + e.pageX + ', "y": ' + e.pageY + ', "text": "' + that2.value + '" }<br/>');
}
});
$(this).append(txt);
txt.each(function() { this.focus(); })
}
});
</script>
So now I need to figure out how to:
Render a pdf to jpeg.
Recreate the PDF putting the annotations on top on it.
You can use GhostScript to render a PDF to JPEG.
Command line example:
gswin32c.exe -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=jpeg -r300 -sOutputFile=output.jpg input.pdf
You need to call GhostScript via the command line version (as above) or use a wrapper.
A Google search turned up this blog post:
A Simple C# Wrapper for Ghostscript
For creating a new PDF you have two main alternatives:
Modify the JPEG and convert the JPEG into PDF (you can use GhsotScript for the conversion)
Use A PDF library that imports your original PDF and add data on top of that
For PDF libraries see this SO question:
Building PDF Files with C#
My company, Atalasoft, provides components that let you view document images, including PDFs and annotate them and save the annotations back into the PDF. In our product suite, you would need dotImage document imaging and the PDF Reader add-on. You would be using dotAnnotate through our AJAX web controls. Here is a link to our online demo - the document displayed is a TIFF, but you could use a PDF too.
I don't think you will be able to have a user load a pdf in their browser, edit it, then save it to the server without them saving it to their machine and then uploading it to the server.
What you can do is setup a webform with a database backend that can represent the pdf, and when they edit it you can regenerate the PDF using itextsharp and loading the information from the database, that way when the user goes back to edit the PDF you can prepopulate the form with what already exists.
itextsharp is extremely easy to use, here is an example:
string sourceFile = "path/to/pdfTemplate.pdf";
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(sourceFile);
PdfStamper stamper = new PdfStamper(reader, new FileStream("path/to/store/pdf/filename.pdf", FileMode.Create));
AcroFields fields = stamper.AcroFields;
//now assign fields in the form to values from your form
fields.SetField("input1", input1.Text);
fields.SetField("input2", input2.Text);
//close the pdf after filling out fields
stamper.SetFullCompression();
stamper.FormFlattening = true;
stamper.Close();
then if you wanted to show the actual PDF you could easily
Response.Redirect("path/to/store/pdf/filename.pdf");
We do this using lowagie on a Spring/Java platform.
Users are presented with pre-generated sales tax returns and can add certain manual adjustments in a few fields. We then recompute totals fields based on their manual input and save the whole thing back to our DB.
You can use either PDFSharp or itextsharp to create annotations. Haven't tried PDFSharp annotation but iTextSharp does work. You'll have to handle the editing on the server side. probably copy the file to a temp folder edit it and save it back.
You'll find itextsharp at http://itextsharp.sourceforge.net, annotation example: bottom at the page http://itextsharp.sourceforge.net/tutorial/ch03.html
pdfsharp: http://www.pdfsharp.net
If you are able to buy a third party library I'd pretty much recommend TxTextControl. http://www.textcontrol.com/en_US/
With this control you can write an editor, that lets you use your pdf as a template and allows the user make changes and save them. All within the browser, without the need to manually select a tempfile on the computer. Acessing is pretty much like using the TextProperty of a normal TextBox.
You did not specify what technology limitations you have. If you can consider a Silverlight solution, and you have client computers that support Silverlight, you can easily do this.
Take a look at how Microsoft Sketchflow works, it permits the user to annotate documents in the web browser and the annotations are persisted back to the server.
Here is a company with a commercial control to annotate PDF (and other formats).
Microsoft does this in their Sketchflow player. Here is a video. Of course you would not be using sketchflow but rather implimenting something similar that meets your needs.
As an added bonus Silverlight 4 supports the clipboard as well as drag and drop so that end users could paste something onto the PDF immage as well as drag any file onto it ehich you would then be able to upload to your server.

ASP.NET MVC on IIS6 rendering issue

I have a small asp.net mvc app running on WIN2k3 and IIS6.
I'm using a wildcard mapping under the application settings in IIS as described in this article http://haacked.com/archive/2008/11/26/asp.net-mvc-on-iis-6-walkthrough.aspx . The application works fine under my local asp.net development server. When I publish from VS2008 out to the production server above the styles are looking partially rendered. For instance. I have an overflow: hidden; set on the body {} and the browser is showing a scrollbar horizontally and vertically. Also, the z-index on all my layers are incorrect. Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Here's a sample of my document head.
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>page title | <%= ViewData["PageTitle"]%></title>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/content/images/misc/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
<%= Html.MooFrameworkConfig("Default")%>
<%= Html.JavaScript("/scripts/framework.js")%>
</head>
framework.js includes the CSS like so:
this.loadCSS("layout.css", "screen");
here is the loadCSS method:
framework.loadCSS = function(fileName,mediaType) {
var headID = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
var cssNode = document.createElement('link');
cssNode.type = 'text/css';
cssNode.rel = 'stylesheet';
cssNode.href = '/content/skins/' + skinBase + '/css/' + fileName;
cssNode.media = mediaType;
headID.appendChild(cssNode);
}
Just as a test, does linking to the CSS file in the HTML (as opposed to loading it with JS) fix the problem?
It is unlikely to be a problem with the web server, per say. Is it possible that the stylesheet you're using isn't being served by the webserver? Maybe the URL to it is slightly different? Check by navigating manually to the stylesheet or by checking that it is being loaded in firebug.
Did you include the CSS fix from the article?
HttpContext.Current.RewritePath(Request.ApplicationPath, false);
I think you may need to post snippets from your website where you include the CSS file and where you simulate the article so that you can get better tips.
You can use Fiddler tool to check if all the files are loaded correctly, I mean no HTTP 403 or 500 or some other status codes for all the files (.css,.js) included in your page.
There maybe some server settings preventing displaying your page correctly.

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