A DinkToPdf alternative that keeps your code.

Why move off DinkToPdf.

• wkhtmltopdf, the engine under DinkToPdf, is no longer maintained: its GitHub repository is archived, and its last release, 0.12.6, dates from June 2020. Source
• DinkToPdf's last NuGet release, 1.0.8, is from April 2017. Source
• wkhtmltopdf renders with an old Qt WebKit, so flexbox, grid and current JavaScript don't work, and layouts have to work around it.
• You ship and load the native libwkhtmltox library yourself, one file per platform, plus the system packages it needs on Linux.

Migrate in three steps.

1. 1Swap the package

   terminal COPY

   dotnet remove package DinkToPdf
   dotnet add package SelectPdf.Compat.DinkToPdf

2. 2Add the engine for your platform

   Add SelectPdf.Universal.Native.<rid>, where <rid> is win-x64, win-x86, linux-x64, linux-arm64 or osx-arm64. Reference one engine package per build, because they all install into the same folder.

   terminal COPY

   dotnet add package SelectPdf.Universal.Native.linux-x64

   A project developed on Windows and deployed to a Linux container can pick the engine by platform in the project file:

   YourApp.csproj COPY

   <PropertyGroup>
     <SelectPdfRid>$(RuntimeIdentifier)</SelectPdfRid>
     <SelectPdfRid Condition="'$(SelectPdfRid)' == '' And
         $([MSBuild]::IsOSPlatform('Windows'))">win-x64</SelectPdfRid>
     <SelectPdfRid Condition="'$(SelectPdfRid)' == ''">linux-x64</SelectPdfRid>
   </PropertyGroup>
   <ItemGroup>
     <PackageReference Include="SelectPdf.Universal.Native.$(SelectPdfRid)"
                       Version="26.5.0" />
   </ItemGroup>

3. 3Delete the native wkhtmltopdf files

   Remove the libwkhtmltox files from your project and the CustomAssemblyLoadContext code that loaded them. Your converter code stays as it is:

   Your existing code COPY

   using DinkToPdf;
   using DinkToPdf.Contracts;
   
   services.AddSingleton(typeof(IConverter),
       new SynchronizedConverter(new PdfTools()));
   
   byte[] pdf = converter.Convert(new HtmlToPdfDocument
   {
       GlobalSettings =
       {
           PaperSize = PaperKind.A4,
           Orientation = Orientation.Portrait,
           Margins = new MarginSettings { Top = 10 }
       },
       Objects =
       {
           new ObjectSettings
           {
               HtmlContent = html,
               FooterSettings = { Center = "Page [page] of [toPage]" }
           }
       }
   });

How DinkToPdf settings map.

Your settings are translated into SelectPdf's. Settings with no equivalent, such as Copies, DPI and MinimumFontSize, are ignored, and each one raises the Warning event so you can see it.

The full list is in the package README.

What behaves differently.

CSS sizes are scaled the way wkhtmltopdf's smart shrinking scaled them, so existing templates keep their size. A few things do change:

Run it on Linux and in Docker.

The engine package bundles the Chromium libraries, so the image is built from the official .NET images with no apt-get lines:

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:8.0 AS build
WORKDIR /src
COPY . .
RUN dotnet publish -c Release -o /app

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:8.0
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=build /app .
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "YourApp.dll"]

Linux needs glibc 2.30 or later (Debian 11+, Ubuntu 20.04+, RHEL 9+), which the official .NET images have. For ARM64 hosts, use SelectPdf.Universal.Native.linux-arm64. Linux images often have no fonts installed: the engine has built-in fonts for Latin scripts, and SelectPdf.Universal.Fonts adds every other script.

Free up to 5 pages, then licensed.

The free package renders through the SelectPdf Community Edition. The .Licensed package is the same code on SelectPdf.Universal, so moving up means changing the package reference.

To accept the first 5 pages of a longer document instead of an error, set SelectPdfCompat.FailOnPageLimit = false; the Warning event then reports the cut.

Using WkHtmlToPdfDotNet instead?

There is a package for Haukcode.WkHtmlToPdfDotNet too, with its WkHtmlToPdfDotNet namespace and its extra members such as CoverSettings. The steps are the same, and the apt-get lines its Dockerfile needed can go:

dotnet remove package Haukcode.WkHtmlToPdfDotNet
dotnet add package SelectPdf.Compat.WkHtmlToPdfDotNet
dotnet add package SelectPdf.Universal.Native.linux-x64