How can I create new PDF files based on a template where some text will be replaced?

I'm developing a CMS aplication in ASP .Net using WebForms and I'm looking for a way to create new PDF files based on a template.

This feature will be used to generate contracts where some placeholders will be replaced with the customer data.

What's the best approach to do that?

Edited: The templates will be static, the main content will never change from customer to customer, only some text in the beginning that will contain the placeholders to recive the customer data. The catch is that I must allow the owner of th开发者_运维问答e application to upload new templates in PDF, with the predetermined placeholders in it to allow the replacement to occur.

I can think of two approaches depending on what type of template you are looking at:

1) Static Template - Say the template does not change with the data (Ex.some standard compliance form etc) You can try something like iTextSharp, where you have your templates defined in your .net code, and you just "plug in" the relevant data and render the PDF via iTextSharp.

2) Dynamic Templates - Say your template isn't standard and is user customizable. In this case, I'd say go for HTML for designing and "print" the for to PDF. There are many components available.

You may also want to try out components like crystal reports.

I'd go with static HTML templates containing substitution tokens e.g. {FullName} which you can then replace with your data. Once you have created an HTML file like this, say in a StringBuilder, you can use PrinceXML or ABCPdf.net (www.websupergoo.com) to transform your HTML into a PDF.

I hope I am understaning this correctly but wouldn't using standard PDF Form Fields give you the functionality and features you require. Load the PDF template into Adobe Acrobat Full or Foxit Phantom and define standard PDF Form Fields on top of the PDF. Each field has a name, position, font etc.

Then just use a standard PDF library to fill in the PDF form fields and 'flatten' the form fields if that is required.

This solution allows the customer to design new PDF layouts and so long as they define form fields with names that match up then you will be able to drop in the replacement form with a simple file copy.

The iText or iTextSharp library should be able to do all of this quite easily. If not them there are many PDF libraries out there that can.