Hi all,
I'm working on a commercial project, a small part of this project will be creating reports and writing the report to a PDF. How would you recommend I do this? I'm only aware of open source projects such as itextsharp.sourceforge.net but I'm guessing I can't use this commercially. What are my options? Anyone done this?
PS Using .Net to develop.
Thanks S
SQL Server Reporting Services can generate reports to PDF. Its very similar to Crystal Reports and its a part of SQL Server, so no extra cost there. And its very easy to implement.
Warning: I am not a lawyer!
Actually, iTextSharp is LGPL so, if I understand that license correctly, you can use it in a closed-source application without any problem (please read the license to make sure, though). I think with LGPL all you'd have to do is include the license from iTextSharp with your product. If you are developing a for-pay service then I don't think you have any obligation (legally) to do anything extra.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/generatepdf.aspx
Or also try http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php. I use this. You can add a reference to it inside your .NET project from the COM tab and then anything you send to the printer (as long as its the bullzip printer) will print to PDF and you can pass in the output dir so it saves directly.
Hope this helps
James.
XML + XSLT + nFOP = PDF
last time i checked nFOP needed J# runtime, url: http://sourceforge.net/projects/nfop/
Make sure to check the T&C of license.
K
If you are feeling particularly masochistic the adobe PDF format specification is available.
Since you are using .Net, you can use a local rdlc report (rather than having to install reporting services.) and use the report viewer to export as a pdf.
Basically, just build the report and call ReportViewer.LocalReport.Render() specifying "PDF" for the format.
I've done it for several projects - works great.