Getting Started with HiQPdf Client for .NET

HiQPdf Client for .NET is delivered as a ZIP archive which can be extracted in a folder. Before using the library it is necessary to install the HiQPdf Server as a Windows Service or as an Azure Cloud Service.

The HiQPdf Client for .NET package contains the following folders and files:

Lib Folder

The Lib folder contains the HiQPdf Client binaries for .NET Standard 2.0 and .NET Framework 4.0.

The net40 sub-folder contains the assembly built for .NET Framework 4.0, which can be directly referenced by applications targeting .NET Framework 4.0 or later.

The netstandard2.0 sub-folder contains the assembly built for .NET Standard 2.0, which can be used in applications targeting .NET 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10. The assembly from this folder can also be directly referenced.

The sub-folders under Lib also include the XML API reference documentation.

Samples Folder

The Samples folder contains demo projects for .NET Framework and modern .NET (6 and later). It provides ready-to-use code examples for all major features of the library.

The net48 sub-folder contains ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET WebForms projects targeting .NET Framework 4.8.

The net8.0 and net10.0 sub-folders contain ASP.NET Core projects targeting .NET 8.0 and .NET 10.0. These projects reference the HiQPdf.Client package.

NuGet Package

The product is also distributed as a NuGet package, which provides a convenient way to reference the product binaries in .NET projects.

The HiQPdf.Client package contains assemblies for both .NET Framework and .NET Standard and can be referenced in projects targeting .NET Framework, .NET or .NET Standard 2.0 and later.

Our sample projects for .NET 8.0 and .NET 10.0 use this package.

Before using the client library it is necessary to install the HiQPdf Server. The server can run as a Windows Service or as an Azure Cloud Service. The server can be accessed with an IP address and a port number which are assigned when the server is installed.

The server is available as a separate package which contains detailed installation instructions for each type of server.

• HiQPdf Server as a Windows Service - The HiQPdf Server runs as a Windows Service on a Windows machine with .NET Framework 4. The available installer will guide you through the installation process. The Windows machine where the server is installed can be the server running your .NET application or a remote Windows machine which has the necessary port opened for external requests

• HiQPdf Server as an Azure Cloud Service - The HiQPdf Server runs as an Azure Cloud Service in the Microsoft cloud. The service can be easily installed from a Visual Studio project or from Azure Portal based on a binary package and configuration files

After server installation you are ready to use the client library in your .NET applications. You can create a .NET project and add reference to the library assembly or to NuGet package.

A simple usage example of the library in a .NET application to convert HTML to PDF is:

using HiQPdfClient;
HtmlToPdf htmlToPdfConverter = new HtmlToPdf(serverIP, serverPort);
byte[] pdfBuffer = htmlToPdfConverter.ConvertUrlToMemory(url);