Html To Pdf: Border for merged cell is missing using Webkit Linux on Ubuntu 18.04, but works ok using Webkit Windows on Windows

[rex]

Hi, thank you very much for making such a great library as Html To Pdf for dotnet.

Project: Dotnet 5.0, Webapi

I have got an HTML table like the below:

CREDIT NOTE

CUSTOMER	Customer Name	FROM	from
ATTENTION	att	DATE	date
ADDRESS	add	CONTACT PERSON	contact
		PHONE	phone
PHONE	phone	EMAIL	email
EMAIL	email	SZ OFFIC	add
Document NO.	doc	PI NO.	pi

On my windows 11 dev PC, with QtBinariesWindows, the outcome pdf is perfect like so:

However, without any code changes, when I publish to Ubuntu 18.04 server, with QtBinariesLinux, the table in the pdf is like this:

I would be grateful if you could please help and point me in the right direction.

Thank you!

Rex

[Gowthamraj Kumar]

Hi Rex, 

Thank you for contacting Syncfusion support. 

You can overcome this issue by using our latest Blink rendering engine which is internally using chrome headless for printing PDF document. So it will preserve the PDF document as like the chrome print preview. This rendering engine support more styles and HTML features when comparing to WebKit rendering engine. Can you please try the conversion in latest Blink rendering engine which supports latest features from web. Please refer below links for more information about Blink rendering engine.  

UG: https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/pdf/convert-html-to-pdf/blink  

 

Please try the above suggestions in your end and let us know if you need any further assistance on this. 

Regards, 

Gowthamraj K 

[rex]

Thank you!

I tried to replace the engine to Blink, everything else stays exactly the same. 

With Blink, Remote images(not loaded) and font(in the css, not applied) are not working correctly while Webkit engine are doing fine.

Is there anything extra I need to do differently for Blink engine please?

Best, 

Rex

[rex]

Hi, sorry, the remote images not loading problem is because my firewall blocked chome. Solved.

Thank you!

Rex

[rex]

I ignored the font problem and tried to publish to the Ubuntu server with Blink engine. 

It fails, stating "Syncfusion.Pdf.PdfException: Failed to convert webpage".

1. I copied BlinkBinariesLinux to the server and made sure chrome is given all permissions. This error appears.
2. Then I gave chrome_wrapper and the specified temp folder all permissions, error persist.
3. Revert the engine back to Webkit(everything else stays the same), it works on both platforms with the same table border problem as described eariler.

As I mentioned above, on windows, Blink engine works with the exception of font not being applied, but on Linux, it doesn't work and the error message is not helpful. 

I am grateful for your help.

Best regards,

Rex

[Gowthamraj Kumar]

Hi Rex, 

Thank you for your update.

We did not faced the unhandled exception in Linux with our Blink converter. However, Please make sure have you provide the execute permission for chrome and chrome-wrapper, chrome_sandbox file inside the BlinkBinaries folder. 

 

 

Also, please try to add the below command line arguments in our converter setting, 

//Set command line arguments to run without sandbox. 

blinkConverterSettings.CommandLineArguments.Add("--no-sandbox"); 

blinkConverterSettings.CommandLineArguments.Add("--disable-setuid-sandbox"); 

Troubleshooting : https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/pdf/convert-html-to-pdf/blink#troubleshooting 

UG: https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/pdf/convert-html-to-pdf/blink#prerequisites-for-linux 

If still you are facing issue in Blink, kindly provide more details such as complete input HTML file/URL (with all resources styles, scripts, etc.,), complete code snippet, environment details (OS, Bit version, RAM, etc) ,product version to check the issue in our end. So, that it will be helpful for us to analyze and assist you further on this. 

Regards, 

Gowthamraj K 

[rex]

Hi Gowthamraj,

Thank you very much for your help.

I did what you advised but still got the same error message.

However, I tumbled on to this blog post: https://www.syncfusion.com/kb/11299/how-to-convert-html-to-pdf-using-blink-in-linux-docker and solved the problem.

It turns out that I missed the dependencies on Linux. After installing a whole bunch of libs as stated in the blog post, shown below, everything worked. Fonts are also applied correctly on Linux, table border is fixed, awesome!

The official doc for blink prerequisites for linux https://help.syncfusion.com/file-formats/pdf/convert-html-to-pdf/blink#prerequisites-for-linux have missed the above requirement of libs while WebKit documents have not.

I have submitted a PR for the doc: https://github.com/syncfusion/fileformat-docs/pull/5, hope it helps.

Thank you,

Rex

[Gowthamraj Kumar]

Hi Rex, 

Thank you for your update. We are glad to know that your problem has been solved. 

We will include the prerequisites details for Linux in our Blink UG documentation and update the details.
  

Regards, 

Gowthamraj K