ASP.NET MVC - Export PDF Document From View Page

Create your MVC application

Open Visual Studio and select File >> New Project.

The "New Project" window will pop up. Select ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework), name your project, and click OK.

Next, a new dialog will pop up for selecting the template. We are going to choose MVC template and click OK.

Once our project is created, we will add ADO.NET Entity Data Model.

Adding ADO.NET Entity Data Model

In Solution Explorer, right-click on the project name, click Add >> Add New Item.

A dialog box will pop up. Inside Visual C#, select Data >> ADO.NET Entity Data Model, and enter the name for your DbContext model as PrintPDFDB, then click Add.

As you can see, we have 4 model contents. We are selecting the first approach (EF Designer from database).

Next step, we need to select the server name, then via drop down list, connect to a database section. You must choose your database name and finally click OK.

After that, the dialog Entity Data Model Wizard will pop up for choosing the objects which will be used in our application. We are selecting the customers table then click Finish.

Finally, we see that EDMX model generates customers table as object, as shown below.

Install Rotativa

In Solution Explorer, right-click on References >> Manage NuGet Packages.

Now, in search input, type Rotativa, select the first line as shown below, and then click "Install".

After installing Rotativa successfully, notice that Rotaiva folder has been added in Solution Explorer.

Create a controller

Now, we are going to create a Controller. Right-click on the Controllers folder> > Add >> Controller>> selecting MVC 5 Controller – Empty >> click Add. In the next dialog, name the controller as CustomerController and then click Add.

CustomerController.cs

Now, let’s explain all the actions implemented within customer controller

1. Index action is used to get customers list from database.
2. PrintViewToPdf action is responsible to convert index action to PDF document. Note here, we have used ActionAsPdf class that accepts a string parameter. This string parameter represents action that we would convert to PDF.
3. Finally, we have added PrintPartialViewToPdf which is responsible to convert DetailCustomer.cshtml partial view to PDF document by using PartialViewAsPdf class that accepts as parameters partial view name and an object which contains data to display within a partial view.

Adding Views

Right click on Index action >> Add view.

Then, add view dialog will be shown as below. Name your view as you like, and select List as template, finally click Add.

Index.cshtml

DetailCustomer.cshtml

Output

Now, our application is ready. We can run and see the output in the browser.


When we click on Convert View To PDF link, we will convert index view to PDF as shown below.

When we click on Print Details View To PDF link, we will convert DetailCustomer partial view to PDF.

That’s all. Please send your feedback and queries in comments box.