Getting started

Install

For a typical .NET 8 / 9 / 10 application:

dotnet add package Tharga.Reporter

Tharga.Reporter targets net10.0. At runtime it uses PDFsharp and ZXing.Net, both of which are fully managed, so the same code renders on Windows, Linux and macOS. See Fonts if your templates name a specific font family.

Namespaces

The core types span three namespaces — import them all at the top of the file that builds your document:

using Tharga.Reporter;            // Renderer, PageFormat
using Tharga.Reporter.Entity;     // Template, Section, DocumentData, DocumentProperties
using Tharga.Reporter.Entity.Element;  // Text, TextBox, Image, BarCode, Line, Rectangle, Table

Tharga.Reporter — Renderer and PageFormat, the rendering entry points.
Tharga.Reporter.Entity — the document model: Template, Section, units, document data, font.
Tharga.Reporter.Entity.Element — the visual elements you stack inside a section's pane, header, or footer.

Minimal example

The shortest useful program is: build a Section, add an element, wrap it in a Template, hand it to Renderer.GetPdfBinary:

using PdfSharp;
using Tharga.Reporter;
using Tharga.Reporter.Entity;
using Tharga.Reporter.Entity.Element;

var section = new Section();
section.Pane.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Hello, world!" });

var template = new Template(section);
var renderer = new Renderer(template);
var pdfBytes = renderer.GetPdfBinary(PageSize.A4);

File.WriteAllBytes("hello.pdf", pdfBytes);

GetPdfBinary returns the PDF as a byte[], so you can stream it to a HTTP response, save it to disk, or hand it to a print pipeline.

Adding margins, a header, and a footer

Section exposes a Margin, a Header, a Pane, and a Footer. Each of the three areas has an ElementList:

using System.Drawing;
using PdfSharp;
using Tharga.Reporter;
using Tharga.Reporter.Entity;
using Tharga.Reporter.Entity.Element;

var section = new Section
{
    Margin = new UnitRectangle { Left = "1cm", Top = "2cm", Right = "1cm", Bottom = "2cm" }
};
section.Header.Height = "2cm";
section.Header.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Invoice", FontSize = "18pt" });

section.Pane.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Body content here." });

section.Footer.Height = "1cm";
section.Footer.ElementList.Add(new Text { Value = "Page {Page} of {TotalPages}" });

var pdf = new Renderer(new Template(section)).GetPdfBinary(PageSize.A4);

Units accept cm, mm, pt, in, and % (relative to the parent area). The {Page} and {TotalPages} tokens are built-in placeholders filled by the renderer.

Next steps