How to write to PDF file in C#?

[Bekzat Karayev]

I have recently learned about File.WriteAllText and File.AppendAllText methods in C#. As I understand it, File.WriteAllText creates txt files and writes text to them without any problem.
But I tried this code in a console app:

class MyFile {    public static void Main()    {        string path = @"C:\temp\MyTest.pdf";        if (!File.Exists(path))        {            string createText = "First line\n";            File.WriteAllText(path, createText);        }        string appendText = "One more line\n";        File.AppendAllText(path, appendText);    } }

It generates a "MyTest.pdf" file, but any PDF reader/viewer cannot open this file, as if it is corrupted. Seems like System.IO can only generate txt files, and assigns them whatever the extension that we specify.
So my question is how can I generate valid pdf files directly from C# code? If I need any exterior library for that purpose could you suggest any free ones?

[Tim Moores]

Welcome to the Ranch.

A text files is a text file, no matter what file extension you give it. I'm not really familiar with C#, but I think you need to use a PDF library, just like you'd need to do in Java. Searching for "crate pdf c# library" yields lots of results; maybe the list at https://csharp-source.net/open-source/pdf-libraries is helpful.

[Stephan van Hulst]

As far as C# libraries go, I'm aware of iText and PDFsharp. I don't have experience with them so I can't give a recommendation.

Personally I've always worked with Aspose Words and Aspose PDF, but they don't offer a free license.

[Claude Moore]

Stephan van Hulst wrote:As far as C# libraries go, I'm aware of iText and PDFsharp. I don't have experience with them so I can't give a recommendation.

I used to use iText with Java, and, to a lesser extend, with C#. It's a very good library, well documented, honestly a bit low level - you have to directly deal with Chunks, Phrases, Paragraph and so on.

[Bekzat Karayev]

Thanks for the replies, I will definitely check out the solutions that you suggested.

Right now, I am playing around with this PDFFlow library.  

I added it to my console app through NuGet Package Manager, it generates PDF files pretty easily, without much code.
I don't even need to use any System.IO methods. The library provides its own methods, that are named pretty straightforward, like this:

class Program {    public static void Main()    {        var documentBuilder = DocumentBuilder.New();        var sectionBuilder = documentBuilder.AddSection();        var paragraph = sectionBuilder.AddParagraph();        paragraph            .AddText("Blue text")            .SetFontColor(Color.Blue);        paragraph            .AddText("Red text")            .SetFontColor(Color.Red);        documentBuilder.Build("MyPDFFile.pdf");    } }

After running the console app, I get a legit PDF file inside Debug folder that can be opened in any viewer.

[Dotnet Developer]

Wow, thank you to Bekzat. PDFFlow worked for me. I used you code and it generated PDF. You saved me)) I also found link to examples of real business documents there, downloaded one and compiled successfully. Examples are here: github.com/gehtsoft-usa/PDF.Flow.Examples

[Campbell Ritchie]

Welcome to the Ranch
Are you promoting your own work or somebody else's?