Getting Started with HiQPdf Client for .NET Core

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

• Assemblies Folder - contains the product binaries built for .NET Standard 2.0 which can be used in any .NET Core application or other type of applications compatible with this standard

  • HiQPdfClient.NetCore.dll - is the assembly for .NET Core to be referenced by your project. It defines the HiQPdf namespace.

  • HiQPdfClient.NetCore.xml - contains the inline help displayed by the Visual Studio

• Samples Folder - contains demo applications with complete source code for ASP.NET Core. The Visual Studio projects are targeting the .NET Core 6 and later

• Documentation.chm - contains the library documentation with detailed explanations, samples and the complete API reference

• NuGet Folder - contains information about the available NuGet package associated with the product

• Notes.txt - contains important notes about the HiQPdf software installation and usage

• License.txt - contains the HiQPdf Software End User License Agreement

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 Core applications. You can create in Visual Studio any type of application for .NET Core and add reference to the library assembly HiQPdfClient.NetCore.dll or to NuGet package. The library can be used on any platform or operating system supporting the .NET Core framework.

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);