Loading CSS from a URL in C# with HTTPWebRequest
In this guide, we'll show you how to load CSS from a URL when converting HTML to PDF using C# and the HTTPWebRequest library.
When converting HTML to PDF, you might want to reference external CSS files to maintain consistent styling.
using System;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
// You can get an API key at https://pdfshift.io
var apiKey = "sk_xxxxxxxxxxxx";
var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("https://api.pdfshift.io/v3/convert/pdf");
request.Method = "POST";
request.ContentType = "application/json";
request.Headers.Add("X-API-Key", apiKey);
var payload = new
{
source = "https://www.example.com",
// Load CSS from a URL
css = "https://example.com/styles.css"
};
var json = System.Text.Json.JsonSerializer.Serialize(payload);
byte[] data = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(json);
request.ContentLength = data.Length;
using (var stream = request.GetRequestStream())
{
stream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
}
try
{
var response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
// Handle errors:
if (response.StatusCode >= HttpStatusCode.BadRequest)
{
throw new Exception($"Request failed with status code {response.StatusCode}");
}
using (var reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream()))
{
var result = reader.ReadToEnd();
File.WriteAllText("result.pdf", result);
}
Console.WriteLine("The PDF document was generated and saved to result.pdf");
}
catch (WebException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine($"Error: {ex.Message}");
}
This allows you to apply external stylesheets to your PDFs.
For further details on the css property and its usage, please refer to our dedicated documentation.
We hope this guide was helpful. If you have any questions or noticed any issues on the code above,
feel free to drop us a line.