Writing a Simple .NET Application

Using the Ultrascale .NET API is very easy. Below we will describe the steps needed to create a simple "Hello World" application.

Step 1: Create a New Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Project

Open Visual Studio 2005 and go to File > New > Project... and select Visual C# > Console Application.

Step 2: Add the Ecrion Ultrascale References

ultra_references

Go to Project > Add Reference... and select Ecrion.Ultrascale.NET in the list as shown in the screenshot above, then click OK.

Step 3: Type In The Code

Just copy the code listed below into the Program.cs file and hit F5 or Debug > Run and a PDF file named HelloWorld.pdf will be written on your C:\temp folder . Remember to first make sure that C:\temp exists and you have write access on it.

using System;

using System.IO;

using Ecrion.Ultrascale;

namespace HelloWorld

{

class Program

{

[STAThread]

static void Main(string[] args)

{

String outFilePath = @"C:\temp\HelloWorld.pdf";

FileStream outputStream = null;

try

{

//XSL-FO input

String xml = "<fo:root xmlns:fo='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format'>" +

"<fo:layout-master-set>" +

"<fo:simple-page-master master-name='all-pages'>" +

"<fo:region-body region-name='xsl-region-body' margin='0.7in'/>" +

"</fo:simple-page-master>" +

"</fo:layout-master-set>" +

"<fo:page-sequence master-reference='all-pages'>" +

"<fo:flow flow-name='xsl-region-body'>" +

"<fo:block>Hello World!</fo:block>" +

"</fo:flow>" +

"</fo:page-sequence>" +

"</fo:root>";

// Get bytes of string

byte[] stringBytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xml);

// Create input stream

Stream inputStream = new MemoryStream(stringBytes);

// Initialize data source

IDataSource input = new XmlDataSource(inputStream, Engine.InputFormat.XSLFO);

// Create output stream

outputStream = new FileStream(outFilePath, FileMode.Create);

// Create parameters for the rendering operation.

RenderingParameters param = new RenderingParameters();

// Set output format

param.OutputFormat = Engine.OutputFormat.PDF;

// Creates print ready documents using Ecrion XF Ultrascale engine

Engine engine = new Engine();

engine.Render(input, outputStream, param);

Console.WriteLine("Document rendered successfully!\n");

}

catch (Exception e)

{

// Report errors

Console.Out.WriteLine(e.Message);

if (e.InnerException != null)

Console.Out.WriteLine(e.InnerException.ToString());

// Close and delete the (partial) output file if any

if (outputStream != null)

{

outputStream.Close();

outputStream = null;

}

if (File.Exists(outFilePath))

File.Delete(outFilePath);

}

This concludes our "Hello World" example. More examples can be found in your Samples folder. Read on below if you want a step by step explanation of the code.

Understanding the Code

Our engine needs to be passed some parameters via a RenderingParameters object. In our example, we will set the most important parameter: output format.

// create parameters for the rendering operation

RenderingParameters param = new RenderingParameters();

// set output format

param.OutputFormat = Engine.OutputFormat.PDF;

The next step is creating our Engine object:

// create a new engine

Engine engine = new Engine();

Next, we'll need an input XSL-FO stream. In our example, we will use a MemoryStream constructed from a hard-coded string. Then, use an XmlDataSource object to pass to the Engine.

// XSL-FO input