print wpf window to pdf file

Question

I need to build a pdf file from an wpf window. that window contains a canvas with some draw and some textboxes and labels whith data.

a friend told me to use crysta

Answer 1

I found a solution to this problem using a free tool called iTextSharp (EDIT: iTextSharp is NOT free for commercial use - sorry for the misinformation). Actually, I needed to convert a WPF FixedDocument to PDF, so this is slightly different than what you want to do, but perhaps it can help you too. Basically, the approach is to take a WPF Fixed Document (this is actually XPS format) and convert it to a bitmap image. This image is then added as a page to a PDF document using iTextSharp's PdfWriter class. I tried several other methods, including a free utility called gxps, but this method worked best for me.

Here is an example from my code.

using iTextSharp.text;
using iTextSharp.text.pdf;
.
.
.
// create an iTextSharp document
Document doc = new Document(PageSize.LETTER, 0f, 0f, 0f, 0f);
PdfWriter.GetInstance(doc, new FileStream("C:\\myFile.pdf", FileMode.Create));
doc.Open();

// cycle through each page of the WPF FixedDocument
DocumentPaginator paginator = myFixedDocument.DocumentPaginator;
for (int i = 0; i < paginator.PageCount; i++)
{
    // render the fixed document to a WPF Visual object
    Visual visual = paginator.GetPage(i).Visual;

    // create a temporary file for the bitmap image
    string targetFile = Path.GetTempFileName();

    // convert XPS file to an image
    using (FileStream outStream = new FileStream(targetFile, FileMode.Create))
    {
        PngBitmapEncoder enc = new PngBitmapEncoder();
        enc.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(CreateBitmapFromVisual(visual, 300, 300)));
        enc.Save(outStream);
    }

    // add the image to the iTextSharp PDF document
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(targetFile, FileMode.Open))
    {
        iTextSharp.text.Image png = iTextSharp.text.Image.GetInstance(System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(fs), System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png);
        png.ScalePercent(24f);
        doc.Add(png);
    }
}
doc.Close();

Here is how to create a FixedDocument in C#:

using System.Windows.Documents;
using System.Windows.Documents.Serialization;
using System.Windows.Markup;

// create an instance of your XAML object (Window or UserControl)
var yourXAMLObj = new YourXAMLObject();

// create a FixedDocument and add a page of your XAML object
var fixedDocument = new FixedDocument();
fixedDocument.DocumentPaginator.PageSize = new Size(96 * 8.5, 96 * 11);

PageContent pageContent = new PageContent();
FixedPage fixedPage = new FixedPage();
fixedPage.Children.Add(yourXAMLObj);
fixedDocument.Pages.Add(pageContent);
((IAddChild)pageContent).AddChild(fixedPage);