C# FlowDocument to HTML conversion

Question

Basically, I have a RichTextBox and I want to convert the formatted contents of it to HTML so it can be sent as an email.

The method I am currently using does not give any formatting at all:

string message = new TextRange(messageTextBox.Document.ContentStart,
                               messageTextBox.Document.ContentEnd).Text;

So I searched around and found this, however, it is over 5 years old and in the comments an MSFT user has commented saying that it is no longer supported - "This sample has been removed from our sample set and is no longer supported", and the HTML it generates is in an older format than modern HTML or XHTML which would be better to have.

Can anybody show me how I can convert the formatted contents of a RichTextBox to HTML?

(So when the email is sent it the recipient sees the email with formatting)

Answer 1

The general technique is to use a XamlWriter to convert the FlowDocument content to a stream of XML, and then to use an XSLT transform to convert the XML to HTML. That's not much of an answer, but that's because there's a huge range of possible HTML representations of any given FlowDocument.

This transform, for instance, converts every top-level Section to a div, every Paragraph to a p, and every Run to a span whose class tells you whether or not it's italicized, bold-faced, or underlined, or any combination of the above. It was useful for the purpose I wrote it for, but to call it a lossy transformation is an understatement:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
    version="1.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
    exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl x">

  <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="x:Section[not(parent::x:Section)]">
    <div>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
    </div>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="x:Section">
    <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="x:Paragraph">
    <p>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()"/>
    </p>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="x:Run">
    <xsl:variable name="class">
      <xsl:if test="@FontStyle='Italic'">
        <xsl:text>i </xsl:text>
      </xsl:if>
      <xsl:if test="@FontWeight='Bold'">
        <xsl:text>b </xsl:text>
      </xsl:if>
      <xsl:if test="contains(@TextDecorations, 'Underline')">
        <xsl:text>u </xsl:text>
      </xsl:if>
    </xsl:variable>
    <span>
      <xsl:if test="normalize-space($class) != ''">
        <xsl:attribute name="class">
          <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space($class)"/>
        </xsl:attribute>
      </xsl:if>
      <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
    </span>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Here's a value converter I wrote to do the conversion - note that in order to use the value converter, you also have to hack around and implement a version of RichTextBox that exposes the content as a dependency property. Really this whole project was a pain.

public class FlowDocumentToHtmlConverter : IValueConverter
{
    private static XslCompiledTransform ToHtmlTransform;
    private static XslCompiledTransform ToXamlTransform;

    public FlowDocumentToHtmlConverter()
    {
        if (ToHtmlTransform == null)
        {
            ToHtmlTransform = LoadTransformResource("Converters/FlowDocumentToXhtml.xslt");
        }
        if (ToXamlTransform == null)
        {
            ToXamlTransform = LoadTransformResource("Converters/XhtmlToFlowDocument.xslt");
        }
    }
    private static XslCompiledTransform LoadTransformResource(string path)
    {
        Uri uri = new Uri(path, UriKind.Relative);
        XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(Application.GetResourceStream(uri).Stream);
        XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
        xslt.Load(xr);
        return xslt;
    }

    #region IValueConverter Members

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
    {
        if (!(value is FlowDocument))
        {
            return null;
        }
        if (targetType == typeof(FlowDocument))
        {
            return value;
        }

        if (targetType != typeof(string))
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException(
                "FlowDocumentToHtmlConverter can only convert back from a FlowDocument to a string.");
        }

        FlowDocument d = (FlowDocument)value;

        using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            // write XAML out to a MemoryStream
            TextRange tr = new TextRange(
                d.ContentStart,
                d.ContentEnd);
            tr.Save(ms, DataFormats.Xaml);
            ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

            // transform the contents of the MemoryStream to HTML
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb))
            {
                XmlWriterSettings xws = new XmlWriterSettings();
                xws.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
                XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(ms);
                XmlWriter xw = XmlWriter.Create(sw, xws);
                ToHtmlTransform.Transform(xr, xw);
            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }
    }

    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
    {
        if (value == null)
        {
            return new FlowDocument();
        }
        if (value is FlowDocument)
        {
            return value;
        }
        if (targetType != typeof(FlowDocument))
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException(
                "FlowDocumentToHtmlConverter can only convert to a FlowDocument.");
        }
        if (!(value is string))
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException(
                "FlowDocumentToHtmlConverter can only convert from a string or FlowDocument.");
        }

        string s = (string)value;

        FlowDocument d;

        using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
        using (StringReader sr = new StringReader(s))
        {
            XmlWriterSettings xws = new XmlWriterSettings();
            xws.OmitXmlDeclaration = true;
            using (XmlReader xr = XmlReader.Create(sr))
            using (XmlWriter xw = XmlWriter.Create(ms, xws))
            {
                ToXamlTransform.Transform(xr, xw);
            }
            ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

            d = XamlReader.Load(ms) as FlowDocument;
        }
        XamlWriter.Save(d, Console.Out);
        return d;
    }

    #endregion
}