Xceed PDF Library for .NET Documentation v1.0
Xceed PDF Library for .NET is a lightweight way to build, edit, sign & secure PDF documents from your .NET applications, without any need for external PDF editing softwares.
Its concept is simple: with its easy-to-use API, you can :
It is possible to use the API to create a PDF document from scratch. Once a PDF is created, it is then possible to add extra pages, text, shapes, form fields & other useful things like hyperlinks, attachments & watermarks.
Text can be stylized using standard fonts or with system embedded fonts coming from .tff files, allowing a lot of freedom in customizing how your PDF will look once a user opens it. To further stylize the document, text can be wrapped around specific areas to create neat & professional-looking documents with easy to read paragraphs. If needed, hyperlinks can be added to specific words, which means that it is possible to create interactive PDF that send users to external ressources, without ever leaving your coding environment.
The API also allows to add form fields to your documents. All major form fields types are supported, including text boxes, number boxes, data/time boxes, checkboxes, combo boxes, list boxes, as well as radio buttons. A special field can be used as well to allow your PDF document to receive a digital signature, which means that fully functional PDF forms can be created from scratch using this API.
If you want to add an extra visual touch to your documents or forms, the API can then be used to create graphic elements like lines & rectangles.
Constantly evolving, this component is growing to include everything you need to create PDF documents from scratch, just like if you were working in a PDF editing software like Acrobat Pro, but without the need of those sometimes hard to use interfaces.
PDF Library for .NET's API allows to modify characteristics of existing PDF documents. For example, it is possible to easily modify the format of a document's pages or set the size of each individual pages. Once a document is modified, it is of course possible to then simply save it, under a new name or not, so that the modifications can be kept.
But that's not all, the API also offers various options to extract information from existing PDF documents. This means that it is possible to extract pages from an existing PDF document, as well as specific words, characters & other text-related elements, like which fonts, size & colours are used to display specific words or characters. Lots of visual elements can also be extracted using the API, which means that images & paths (lines & rectangles) are part of the offered extraction features, which also includes form fields, hyperlinks, bookmarks, attachments & even document-specific characteristics, like metadata & page rotation.
To know more about how the API works, have a look at the "How-To" section of this documentation, which features clear examples on how to add pages, text, form fields & other elements to a PDF document, as well as various examples on how to extract or modify information when working with pre-existing documents.
If you don't know where to start, might we suggest the "Add Pages" example, which will show you how to create a PDF document from scratch by adding pages to it.
As of v1.0, Xceed PDF Library for .NET supports the .NET 5+ technology and can be used to create .NET 5+ applications; to do so, you simply need to use the .NET equivalent assemblies.
The main assembly for Xceed Library for NET is simply called Xceed.PdfLibrary.NET.dll and will be found in the .NET5 folder.
To use .NET 5+, you will also need a new DLLs, available on NuGet: SkiaSharp.
You can also install all the necessary DLLs by installing the following NuGet package: Xceed.Products.Documents.Libraries.Full (includes Words, Workbooks & PdfLibrary) or Xceed.PdfLibrary.NET (includes only the PdfLibrary).
When downloading the dlls from Nuget, you will need to set the licenseKey in code. See the Licensing topic for a code example.
If you do not have a licenseKey, please e-mail us at support@xceed.com and we will be happy to provide you with a 45-day trial license key.
Xceed PDF Library for NET supports non-Windows environments.
If you download Xceed PDF Library for NET or Xceed Document Libraries from NuGet
The necessary references will be automatically installed. You only need to make sure that your code will use the Color, Point, RectangleF & Font types from Xceed.Drawing.NET.dll instead of using the ones taken from System.Drawing.dll or System.Drawing.Common.dll.
If you manually add the references to your application
- For a NET5+ application, make sure that you are referencing the following files:
- For a .NET Framework application, make sure that you are referencing the following files:
You also need to make sure that your code will use the Color type from Xceed.Drawing.NET.dll instead of the ones found in System.Drawing.dll or System.Drawing.Common.dll.