How to Use C# to Convert HTML to PDF & OCR Documents For Legal Industry

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, automation plays a pivotal role in improving efficiency and accuracy. One common task in legal automation is converting a collection of HTML files into a single searchable PDF document.

In this guide, we'll explore how Iron Suite, a powerful set of developer tools tailored for .NET environments can streamline this process.

Iron Suite: A Comprehensive Toolkit for .NET Developers

IronSoftware's Iron Suite is a comprehensive collection of .NET software components designed to streamline development processes and enhance productivity for developers working with various .NET frameworks. IronSoftware, a leading provider of .NET software tools, offers Iron Suite as a one-stop solution for developers seeking high-quality components for tasks ranging from document manipulation to barcode generation and beyond.

At the heart of Iron Suite lies a rich assortment of libraries and tools tailored to address common challenges encountered in software development projects. Here's a glimpse into some of the key components of Iron Suite:

• IronPDF: For creating, editing, and managing PDF documents, including converting HTML to PDF.

• IronWord: Allows creating and editing DOC and DOCX files.

• IronXL: Enables working with Excel files directly, allowing reading, editing, and creation without requiring Microsoft Office or Excel Interop.

• IronOCR: Provides Optical Character Recognition functionality to extract text from images in over 127 languages.

• IronBarcode: Offers the ability to read and write various barcode formats, including QR codes.

• IronQR: Specifically focused on generating, reading, and styling QR codes.

• IronZIP: Enables compressing and decompressing files in ZIP format.

• IronPrint: Provides functionalities for managing printing tasks and interacting with printers directly from your .NET code.

• IronWebScraper: Designed for efficiently scraping structured data from websites.

HTML to PDF Conversion and OCR Analysis with Iron Suite

Consider a scenario where you're tasked with processing a zip file containing HTML files, and your objective is to convert these HTML files into PDF format for subsequent OCR (Optical Character Recognition) analysis. To accomplish this task efficiently and effectively, leveraging the capabilities of Iron Suite's three essential libraries is the optimal solution. Let's have a brief overview of each of the libraries.

IronZIP - The C# Zip Archive .NET Library

Simplifying file compression and extraction, IronZIP enables seamless handling of zip archives within C# applications. Its intuitive API allows for easy extraction of HTML files from our zip archive.

Some key features of IronZip:

• Compression and Decompression: Supports various archive formats like ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, 7Z, and more.

• Encryption and Decryption: Secure your archives with Traditional password or stronger AES encryption (256-bit by default).

• Streaming Operations: Process large archives efficiently without loading the entire file into memory.

• Self-Extracting Archive Creation: Create executable archives that can be extracted without requiring IronZIP.

IronPDF - The C# PDF Library

As a robust PDF rendering and manipulation library, IronPDF facilitates the creation and manipulation of PDF documents directly within C# code. With features like HTML to PDF conversion, it's perfect for our task of converting HTML files to PDF format.

Some key features of IronPDF DLL:

• HTML to PDF Conversion: Convert HTML string content or HTML document, including CSS and JavaScript, into high-quality PDFs.

• PDF Creation and Manipulation: Create new PDFs from scratch, merge existing PDFs, or extract pages.

• Page Customization: Control page layout, margins, headers, footers, and watermarks.

• Form Handling: Capture form data from HTML sources and populate PDF forms.

IronOCR - The C# OCR Library

An invaluable tool for text extraction, IronOCR specializes in extracting text from various sources, including scanned documents and PDF files. Its versatility makes it ideal for extracting searchable text from our generated PDF document.

Some key features of IronOCR:

• Optical Character Recognition: Extract text from scanned documents, images, and PDFs with high accuracy.

• Multilingual Support: Recognizes text in over 127+ languages.

• Layout Analysis: Preserves the original formatting of the extracted text as much as possible.

• Customizable Accuracy: Fine-tune OCR accuracy using various configurations.

Creating a Visual Studio Project

To begin, create a new Visual Studio project for our legal automation task. Ensure you have the necessary environment set up for .NET development. Follow the steps to create a project in Visual Studio:

1. Open Visual Studio and click on the "Create a new project" option.

   

2. Choose the appropriate project template based on your requirements (e.g., Console Application, Windows Forms Application).

   

3. Specify the project name and location, then click "Next".

   

4. From Additional Information, select the latest .NET Framework.

   

5. Click "Create" to create the project.

Installing Libraries

Next, install the three essential libraries - IronZIP, IronPDF, and IronOCR - into your project. You can easily do this by downloading the respective packages from IronSoftware's website or using NuGet Package Manager within Visual Studio.

Install using NuGet Package Manager for Solutions

To integrate the libraries into your .NET project:

• In your Visual Studio C# ConsoleApp, right-click on your project in Solution Explorer and select "Manage NuGet Packages for Solution"

IronZIP

1. In the NuGet Package Manager window, search for "IronZip".

   

2. Select "IronZip" from the search results and click on the "Install" button.

3. NuGet will download and add the necessary dependencies to your project automatically.

IronPDF

1. In the NuGet Package Manager window, search for "IronPDF".

   

2. Select "IronPDF" from the search results and click on the "Install" button.

IronOCR

1. In the NuGet Package Manager window, search for "IronOCR".

   

2. Select "IronOCR" from the search results and click on the "Install" button.

Steps to Convert HTML File to PDF File

Now, to easily convert HTML, to PDF and subsequently perform OCR, we have set up the libraries from Iron Suite, each offering unique functionalities tailored to our task. The following zip archive containing multiple HTML web page files will be used to extract HTML files and then convert HTML files to PDF file format for OCR analysis:

The Zip file shown in the above screenshot contains 3 HTML web pages from a simple website. The HTML pages contain simple HTML code that will be passed to the PDF converter method for converting HTML files to a single PDF document. Then OCR will be applied to analyze html elements in the generated PDF document and print all the HTML content in the console window.

1. Including Iron Suite Libraries (.NET Namespaces)

To utilize the functionalities offered by Iron Suite in our C# project, we'll need to reference the appropriate namespaces for each library. Here's how to include them in our Program.cs file:

using IronZip;
using IronPdf;
using IronOcr;

using IronZip;
using IronPdf;
using IronOcr;

Imports IronZip
Imports IronPdf
Imports IronOcr

2. Extract HTML Files from Zip using IronZIP:

Firstly, we will utilize IronZIP's intuitive API to extract HTML files from the zip archive. With a simple method call, we can efficiently extract the necessary files to proceed with the conversion process.

// Extract ZIP
IronZipArchive.ExtractArchiveToDirectory("assets/website.zip", "extracted");

// Extract ZIP
IronZipArchive.ExtractArchiveToDirectory("assets/website.zip", "extracted");

' Extract ZIP
IronZipArchive.ExtractArchiveToDirectory("assets/website.zip", "extracted")

To get more out of the IronZIP library, please visit this documentation page.

Output - Extracted HTML Files

3. Convert HTML to PDF using IronPDF:

Secondly, we'll use IronPDF's powerful capabilities to easily convert all the extracted HTML files into a single PDF document. With its straightforward API, we can easily generate high-quality PDFs directly within our C# code.

// Create a ChromePdfRenderer object for rendering HTML to PDF (consider using IronHtmlRenderer for better HTML to PDF conversion)
ChromePdfRenderer renderer = new ChromePdfRenderer();

// Initialize an empty list to store the individual PDF documents
List<PdfDocument> pdfs = new List<PdfDocument>();

// Get all HTML files with the .html extension from the "extracted" folder
var htmlFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles("extracted", "*.html");

// Loop through each HTML file
foreach (var htmlFile in htmlFiles)
{
    // Render the current HTML file as a PDF document using the ChromePdfRenderer
    var pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlFileAsPdf(htmlFile);

    // Add the generated PDF document to the list
    pdfs.Add(pdf);
}

// Merge all the individual PDF documents in the list into a single PDF document
var document = PdfDocument.Merge(pdfs);

// Save the merged PDF document as "HtmlToPDF.pdf"
document.SaveAs("HtmlToPDF.pdf");

// Create a ChromePdfRenderer object for rendering HTML to PDF (consider using IronHtmlRenderer for better HTML to PDF conversion)
ChromePdfRenderer renderer = new ChromePdfRenderer();

// Initialize an empty list to store the individual PDF documents
List<PdfDocument> pdfs = new List<PdfDocument>();

// Get all HTML files with the .html extension from the "extracted" folder
var htmlFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles("extracted", "*.html");

// Loop through each HTML file
foreach (var htmlFile in htmlFiles)
{
    // Render the current HTML file as a PDF document using the ChromePdfRenderer
    var pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlFileAsPdf(htmlFile);

    // Add the generated PDF document to the list
    pdfs.Add(pdf);
}

// Merge all the individual PDF documents in the list into a single PDF document
var document = PdfDocument.Merge(pdfs);

// Save the merged PDF document as "HtmlToPDF.pdf"
document.SaveAs("HtmlToPDF.pdf");

' Create a ChromePdfRenderer object for rendering HTML to PDF (consider using IronHtmlRenderer for better HTML to PDF conversion)
Dim renderer As New ChromePdfRenderer()

' Initialize an empty list to store the individual PDF documents
Dim pdfs As New List(Of PdfDocument)()

' Get all HTML files with the .html extension from the "extracted" folder
Dim htmlFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles("extracted", "*.html")

' Loop through each HTML file
For Each htmlFile In htmlFiles
	' Render the current HTML file as a PDF document using the ChromePdfRenderer
	Dim pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlFileAsPdf(htmlFile)

	' Add the generated PDF document to the list
	pdfs.Add(pdf)
Next htmlFile

' Merge all the individual PDF documents in the list into a single PDF document
Dim document = PdfDocument.Merge(pdfs)

' Save the merged PDF document as "HtmlToPDF.pdf"
document.SaveAs("HtmlToPDF.pdf")

IronPDF not only provides PDF conversion from HTML file, HTML form, HTML string or URL, but also from other formats to PDF. For more detailed information and ready-to-use sample code snippets, please visit this documentation and code examples page.

Output - PDF

The output PDF clearly displays each HTML page content on a separate PDF page using IronPDF's powerful Chromium HTML conversion engine.

In addition to this, you can also use IronPrint for .NET - The C# Printing Library for printing the generated PDF file. IronPrint efficiently sends the PDFs or Images to the default printer for printing.

For more information on how to print a document using IronPrint, please visit this documentation page.

4. Extract Text using IronOCR:

Finally, employ IronOCR to extract searchable text from the generated PDF document. By utilizing IronOCR's advanced text extraction features, we can ensure the extracted text is accurate and ready for further processing.

The following code snippet takes the PDF file generated from IronPDF and successfully performs OCR for further analysis:

// Create an IronTesseract object for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
var ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract();

// Create an OcrInput object to specify the input for OCR processing
using var ocrInput = new OcrInput();

// Load the PDF document for text extraction
ocrInput.LoadPdf("HtmlToPdf.pdf");

// Perform OCR on the loaded PDF using the IronTesseract engine
var ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(ocrInput);

// Print the extracted text to the console
Console.WriteLine(ocrResult.Text);

// Create an IronTesseract object for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
var ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract();

// Create an OcrInput object to specify the input for OCR processing
using var ocrInput = new OcrInput();

// Load the PDF document for text extraction
ocrInput.LoadPdf("HtmlToPdf.pdf");

// Perform OCR on the loaded PDF using the IronTesseract engine
var ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(ocrInput);

// Print the extracted text to the console
Console.WriteLine(ocrResult.Text);

' Create an IronTesseract object for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Dim ocrTesseract = New IronTesseract()

' Create an OcrInput object to specify the input for OCR processing
Dim ocrInput As New OcrInput()

' Load the PDF document for text extraction
ocrInput.LoadPdf("HtmlToPdf.pdf")

' Perform OCR on the loaded PDF using the IronTesseract engine
Dim ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(ocrInput)

' Print the extracted text to the console
Console.WriteLine(ocrResult.Text)

For more detailed analysis of the text, visit this ready-use code examples page here.

Output - PDF Text

The output speaks for itself: Fast, Accurate, and Error Free, endorsing the efficiency of IronOCR.

Why Iron Suite?

Iron Suite stands out as a market-leading .NET suite for your office documents, offering several compelling reasons for its superiority.

1. 9 for the Price of 2:

With Iron Suite, you get access to all nine IronSoftware products for the price of just two individual products. This incredible value proposition ensures that you have a comprehensive toolkit at your disposal without breaking the bank.

2. Cross-platform Compatibility:

Iron Suite is designed to work seamlessly across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Docker, Azure, and AWS. Whether you're developing applications for desktop, web, or cloud environments, Iron Suite has you covered.

3. Quick Setup:

From the moment you download Iron Suite to deploying it in production, you can be up and running in as little as five minutes. The straightforward installation process and intuitive APIs enable developers to start leveraging the suite's capabilities with minimal setup time.

4. Comprehensive Documentation:

Say goodbye to guesswork and trial and error. Iron Suite comes with extensive documentation and examples for every component, ensuring that developers have clear guidance and resources at their fingertips to maximize productivity.

5. 24/5 Technical Support:

Need assistance or have questions about using the Iron Suite? The dedicated team of engineers is available round-the-clock, five days a week, to provide technical support and address any issues you may encounter. Rest assured that help is always just a message away.

6. Money-Back Guarantee:

Iron Suite offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. If for any reason you're not completely satisfied with your purchase, simply let Iron team know within 30 days, and they'll refund your payment, no questions asked.

7. Start Your Free Trial:

Ready to experience the power and versatility of Iron Suite for yourself? Start your free trial today and discover how the comprehensive suite of .NET document tools can streamline your development workflows and unlock new possibilities for your projects.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Iron Suite offers .NET developers a comprehensive toolkit for streamlining legal automation tasks such as generating pdfs and converting HTML files to searchable PDF documents. By harnessing the power of IronZIP, IronPDF, and IronOCR, developers can automate and optimize their workflows, ultimately improving efficiency and accuracy in legal document processing. With Iron Suite at your disposal, the possibilities for automation are endless.

For the HTML to PDF conversion task, we utilized the Iron Suite's three essential libraries: IronZIP, IronPDF, and IronOCR. IronPrint can also be a potential contender for this task if a printing facility is required. If purchased individually , these four libraries would amount to a total cost of $749 * 4 = $2,996.

However, with Iron Suite, you gain access to not just three or four, but nine powerful libraries for the price of only two individual products. That's an incredible value proposition, providing you with a comprehensive toolkit for all your .NET development needs. At just $1,498, IronSuite offers exceptional value, saving you both time and money while equipping you with a wide range of tools to streamline your development workflows.