Is it possible to covert a view (HTML) into an image using ASP.NET MVC?

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I have a requirement where I want to convert a whole view which contains HTML & CSS elements to image and then pass it to the users. I am just wondering is there any builtin library in C# to generate images out of a view on the fly?
Please do not suggest me third party tools.

What I have tried:

I am lost and I don't know where to start from.

Posted 19-Jan-17 6:14am

Barcelonista Naser

Updated 19-Jan-17 6:33am

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2 solutions

Solution 2

You could just take a screen capture and adjust the image size accordingly? I found this solution on Google with little searching.

C#

Rectangle bounds = Screen.GetBounds(Point.Empty);
using(Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(bounds.Width, bounds.Height))
{
    using(Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))
    {
         g.CopyFromScreen(Point.Empty, Point.Empty, bounds.Size);
    }
    bitmap.Save("test.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
}

Posted 19-Jan-17 6:33am

eddieangel

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Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 12:39pm

I don't want to render the view to the user I just simply want to generate an image out of html that never will be rendered.

eddieangel 19-Jan-17 13:49pm

Ok. Your options are definitely limited at that point. Once you stop relying on the browser to render your HTML you have to find another engine. As Richard said above, if you don't want to rely on a third party control you are going to have to reinvent the wheel and have it render in your code and then convert to a bmp.

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Richard Deeming · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-19T06:29:00

Solution 1

The only built-in option would be to use the WebBrowser control in a new thread, as described in this StackOverflow answer[^]. However, that's probably not going to work very well in an ASP.NET site.

Why are you so opposed to third-party tools? For example, HTML-Renderer[^] looks like it would do exactly what you need, and is free to use. The license[^] looks pretty relaxed too.

Posted 19-Jan-17 6:29am

Richard Deeming

Comments

Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 12:40pm

How can i configure it to work with asp.net mvc? Is it working with asp.net mvc?

Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 12:42pm

There is no example on asp.net mvc

Richard Deeming 19-Jan-17 12:46pm

This example[^] shows you how to generate an image from HTML.

This blog post[^] shows you how to render an MVC view to a string.

Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 13:22pm

I can't resolve HtmlRender although I installed the HTML renderer core with nuget. what is the problem?

Richard Deeming 19-Jan-17 13:40pm

Looks like you need to add either the HtmlRenderer.WinForms or HtmlRenderer.WPF package to access that class.

Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 13:47pm

Thanks for your quick response, solved it with adding winforms nuget package. One last question. Can I pass a view name instead of in html section or I should pass the html within it directly as here.
Image image = HtmlRender.RenderToImage("MVC View Name")

Richard Deeming 19-Jan-17 13:52pm

No, because the HTML Renderer library doesn't know anything about ASP.NET or MVC. You'll need to render the view to a string, as shown in Rick Strahl's blog post, and then pass that to the RenderToImage method.

Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 13:58pm

If I render a view into a string, will the look and feel remain the same then? Sorry for over loading you with question but I need to know it.

Richard Deeming 19-Jan-17 14:01pm

I don't know - I've never used the tool.

I suspect it probably will, but you might run into issues with linked stylesheets.

Barcelonista Naser 19-Jan-17 14:05pm

Thank you for your help I appreciate that. If I get trouble with linked style sheets I'll use inline CSS. :)