Converting MS Word Documents to PDF in ASP.NET
Similar questions have been asked, but nothing exactly like mine, so here goes.
We have a collection of Microsoft Word documents on an ASP.NET web server with merge fields whose values are filled in as a result of user form submissions. After the field merge, the server must convert the document to PDF and stream it down to the browser. Our first inclination was to use the Visual Studio Tools for Office API; however, we ran into this warning from Microsoft:
Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, ASP.NET, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when Office is run in this environment.
It looks like the field manipulation can be done using the Open XML SDK, but what's the best way to convert Word 2007 documents to PDF without opening Word? The optimal solution would be low-cost, scalable, have a low memory footprint, be easy to deploy, and have a .NET API.
Answer
It's not exactly Open Source, but Aspose has a couple products which can do that,
Aspose.Pdf.Kit is a non-graphical PDF® document manipulation component that enables both .NET and Java developers to manage existing PDF files as well as manage form fields embedded within PDF files. Aspose.Pdf is perfect for creating new PDF files; however, developers often need to edit already existing PDF documents. Aspose.Pdf.Kit allows them to do just that. Aspose.Pdf.Kit allows developers to create powerful applications for merging data directly into PDF documents as well as for updating and managing PDF documents. Aspose.Pdf.Kit is a wonderful product and works great with the rest of our PDF products.
and Aspose.pdf
Aspose.Pdf is a non-graphical PDF® document reporting component that enables either .NET or Java applications to create PDF documents from scratch without utilizing Adobe Acrobat®. Aspose.Pdf is very affordably priced and offers a wealth of strong features including: compression, tables, graphs, images, hyperlinks, security and custom fonts. Aspose.Pdf supports the creation of PDF files through API, XML templates and XSL-FO files. Aspose.Pdf is very easy to use and is provided with 14 fully featured demos written in both C# and Visual Basic.
Check out the API and demos. You can download a DLL for free to try it out. I've used both before and they work out great.
There's also iTextSharp which is a C# port of iText, a Java PDF converter. I've heard some people try it with mixed results.