Archive For November 2022

Exploring generating PDF files from HTML in ASP.NET Core

calendar_today 30 November 2022 13:45

.NET 6 ASP.NET Core Bootstrap HTML5 iTextSharp Razor Pages

Back in 2008, I wrote a series of articles about using iTextSharp to generate PDF files in an ASP.NET application. I still use iTextSharp in a large MVC 5 application that I'm in the process of migrating to ASP.NET Core. The version I use is very old (4.1.6), and the API is very low level so it takes quite a while to write the code required to generate even a moderately complex PDF. Ideally I need a replacement for the new application that can generate PDF files purely from HTML, which is an API I'm much more comfortable with. This ancient version of iTextSharp doesn't support HTML as a source of content. In this article, I consider some alternatives.

A reusable generic autocomplete component for Blazor

calendar_today 17 November 2022 13:14

ASP.NET Core Blazor

In my last article, I looked at building a simple autocomplete component within a Blazor WebAssembly application that fetches data dynamically from a database via an API depending on what the user enters into an input. It works nicely but it has not been designed to be reusable. In this article, I look at the steps required to convert the component so that it can be plugged in anywhere within an application and work with any kind of data.

Simple Autocomplete for Blazor

calendar_today 07 November 2022 13:35

ASP.NET Core Blazor

One of the things I really like about Blazor is how often it is easy to implement features in your application that, if needed in a server-side application, would have you testing your JavaScript-fu or reaching for a third party component. One example is an autocomplete component that fetches live data from a database that matches that which a user enters into a form control and changes as the user types. In this article, I'll show how to build such a component for a Blazor WebAssembly app and style it like a dropdown.