Itext Ilist to pdf

Question

I have an IList in c#, and I want to put it in PDF through IText. Is there any way to do this? I have been searching for it for a while now.

What i tried to do was:

s = BLLstudent.selectStudentById(Convert.ToInt16(Request.QueryString["s"]));
var data = BLLevk.selectEvkDetailsVanStudent(s.pk_studentID);

Document mySavedPDF = new Document();

FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"C:\Users\Toon\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\WebSites\LilyNoone-LessLes-503729a\prints\" + s.studentNaam + "_" + s.studentVoornaam + ".pdf", FileMode.Create);
PdfWriter.GetInstance(mySavedPDF, fs);
mySavedPDF.Open();
mySavedPDF.Add(data);
mySavedPDF.CloseDocument();

But this said

Error 2 Argument 1: cannot convert from 'System.Collections.Generic.IList' to 'System.IO.TextReader' C:\Users\Toon\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\WebSites\evk-applicatie-181211\web\admin\a_overzicht_student.aspx.cs 95 77 C:...\evk-applicatie-181211\

Is there any way to insert the list directly?

Thx in advance

Answer 1

No, there's no way to directly add a generic IList to the Document object directly. If you take a look at the Document.Add method, the only valid parameter is an Element object - that's why the Exception is thrown. If you think about it, trying to add a generic IList to a PDF would be very difficult - at the minimum you would have to take into consideration both the IList elements type, and also how to format each member property (after you determine both type and members using Reflection) in the PDF.

So you have a couple of choices.

• Convert your IList to a simple XML representation, then send it to a XMLWorker or HTMLWorker.
• Write your own wrapper or code to display your IList.

The second choice isn't so bad, and you have complete control of how to display your collection. Here's a simple example:

Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
IList<Student> students = Student.GetStudents();
using (Document document = new Document()) {
  PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(
    document, Response.OutputStream
  );
  document.Open();
  foreach (Student s in students) {
    document.Add(new Paragraph(string.Format(
      "[{0:D8}] - {1}, {2}. MAJOR: {3}",
      s.Id, s.NameLast, s.NameFirst, s.Major
    )));
    List list = new List(List.ORDERED);
    foreach (string c in s.Classes) {
      list.Add(new ListItem(c));
    }
    document.Add(list);
  }
}

With a simple class like this:

public class Student {
  public string NameLast, NameFirst, Major;
  public int Id;
  public string[] Classes;
  public static IList<Student> GetStudents() {
    string[] majors = {"Math", "Engineering", "CS"};
    List<Student> l = new List<Student>();
    for (int i = 0; i < majors.Length;) {
      l.Add(new Student() {
        Major = majors[i], 
        Id = ++i, NameLast = string.Format("LastNameStudent{0}", i),
        NameFirst = string.Format("FirstnameStudent{0}", i),
        Classes = new string[] {"Calc I", "Physics II", "Databases"}
      });
    }
    return l;
  }
}