Pdf creation Suggestions

I have a small web application based on asp.net 2010 that manages invoices.

After the invoice is saved, it should automatically generate a pdf file.

which of the follow开发者_Go百科ing solutions would be fast and easy to incorporate?

1. Use Sql Server 2008 Reports
2. Use Crystal Reports 2008 and Crystal Reports 2008 for VS 2010
3. Use itextsharp to create the pdf file
4. Use XSLFO to create the pdf file

The point here is I dont know any of the above. Which one is easy and quick to learn and implement. Are there any other solution to achieve this functionality?

The first two options sound a bit heavyweight for your requirements.

You don't say if you require it to be free (open source) or if you are happy to pay for a solution; a quick search found this: ExpertPDF HtmlToPdf Converter

I have to admit that I have never used it but it might be an easy solution if you are already displaying the invoice on your web page.

I would go for XSL-FO as it is open standard and you are not being locked in a proprietary solution. You also have access to visual XSL-FO editors/designers and 3 or 4 high volume server to choose from.

As far as I know, many invoicing statements solutions today use XSL-FO becuse it is very powerful - you can footnotes or very complex pagination, 10-20 output formats, etc.

I personally prefer iTextSharp as it is very flexible as you build the PDF from code as you need it. However as it is a port of the iText open source java library for PDF it is not 100% intuitive (well from a c# perspective)..

However said there are a lot of help blogs and articles.

I have found:-

1. SQL server 2008 needs a lot of configuration and does not quite give you what you want.
2. You need to purchase Crystal Reports, however said it is quite a good product
3. iTextSharp - Free, fairly easy to set up but not 100% intuitive
4. I have used this and found it tough going although it is possible to get the desired ouput.

edit

For question regarding VS2010, I used it with VS2005 a number of years ago as the basic version came shipped with VS2005. According to the website it appears to integrate into Visual Studio 2010, however this I suspect depends on what version you have.

SAP Crystal Reports can open and edit files created with SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010 (and vice-versa), providing a fuller set of report design features compared to SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010. SAP Crystal Reports does not include tooling to support the Visual Studio 2010 development environment but developers can use the SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010 runtime engine to deploy SAP Crystal Reports RPT files with all the extended design features.

i have done something similar with XSLFO - if you know XSLT then XSLFO is very simple to add to XSLT

For me, using Aspose.Words with the mailmerge feature was always the fastest and most flexible/comfortable solution, although not the cheapest.

The super simple way is use third party converter such as ABCPdf, Winnovative PDF Converter. But they cost abount $500 USD. You said you bought Crystal Report, it can use to generate pdf as well, just use Crystal Report design the pdf template, connect to your database (dataset,datatables). In your code to push data from your database and fill the pdf template finally save as pdf. But deploy Crystal Report you need merge some modules, otherwise you need install Crystal Report on your server as well.