Quest PDF

# Release notes

# 2022.05

This release introduces new DynamicComponent element. It is useful when you want to generate dynamic and conditional content that is page aware, e.g. per-page totals. Read more here.

Other changes:

  • Extend text rendering capabilities by adding subscript and superscript effects (special thanks to Bennet Fenner),
  • Improved table rendering performance,
  • Previewer tool stability fixes,
  • Documentation fixes.

I would like to thank entire community for enormous help in improving and extending the library.

# 2022.04

Release theme: Introduced the QuestPDF Previewer tool - a hot-reload powered, cross-platform program that visualizes your PDF document and updates its preview every time you make a code change. You don't need to recompile your code after every small adjustment. Save time and enjoy the design process! (available only for dotnet 6 and beyond). Read more here.

Special thanks to Bennet Fenner who came up with the idea, implemented the prototype, actively discussed architectural concepts, and took a crucial role in the testing phase. People like him make open-source a joy!

Other changes:

  • Improved default word-wrapping algorithm to better handle words which do not fit on the available width,
  • Introduced new word-wrapping option 'WrapAnywhere' that wraps word at the last possible character instead of moving it into new line.

# 2022.03

  • Added minimal API to help you quickly start with QuestPDF development and speed up prototyping,
  • Improved exception message when desired font type cannot be found (instead of loading default font on Windows and failing with wrong characters on Linux),
  • Improved support for custom font types: loading all type faces from a file, respecting true font family, using CSS-like algorithm to find best style match,
  • Added support for custom page number formats in the Text element, e.g. you can implement roman literal style if required,
  • Improved text API to make it more concise,
  • Extended support for the Section element (previously the Location element) by tracking: beginning page number, end page number, page length, page number within location,
  • Renaming: the ExternalLink element was renamed to the Hyperlink element,
  • Renaming: the Location element was renamed to the Section element,
  • Renaming: the InternalLink element was renamed to the SectionLink element,
  • Updated homepage and GitHub pages content.

# 2022.02

  • Added a ScaleToFit element - scales its child down so it fits in the provided space,
  • Added a StopPaging element - when its child requires more than one page to fully render, only the first page is shown,
  • Added a 'LineVertical' and a 'LineHorizontal' elements - those will simplify your code a lot, there is no need to use the Border element anymore!
  • Renaming: the Stack element was renamed to the Column element,
  • Renaming: children of the Row element are now called items instead of columns, e.g. RelativeItem instead of RelativeColumn,
  • Added support of the AutoItem to the Row element - those items take as little width as possible,
  • Extended Fluent API to support unit types, e.g. inches, centimeters, etc.
  • Improved default Fluent configuration behavior for elements: Scale, Padding, Translate,
  • Improved integration support with the HttpContext.Response.Body. This improvement was introduced by schulz3000, thank you!

# 2022.01

Introduced new element: Table - a great way to construct complex document structures, e.g. reports. This element covers all cases offered by combination of the Stack and the Row elements. Additionally, it provides support for more complex layouts and corner cases. Updating to the Table element can greatly simplify your code 😁

Other changes:

  • Added new element DefaultTextStyle - it allows set new text style to all its children,
  • Improved the default paging behavior for the Row element. In some minor corner cases it might cause infinite layout exceptions and confuse developers. This improvement was suggested by SvizelPritula, thank you!
  • Improved the Row element: added new type of column that combines constant and relative widths. This improvement was proposed by qcz, thank you!
  • Fixed default page sizes for: Letter and Legal. This improvement was introduced by markhewett, thank you!
  • Documentation: added article on how to run QuestPDF on in Blazor Webassembly. This article was written by pablopioli, thank you!
  • Other library / documentation improvements.

# 2021.12

  • Improved debugging experience for layout-related exceptions. To make the library predictable, it is (by design) very strict about layout rules and throws an exception when a constraint cannot be met. In this release, each exception contains an element stack that contains all information needed to identify the issue. By default, this feature is enabled only when debugger is attached.
  • Improved layout algorithm performance by introducing additional caching layer. This cache reduces the layout time by half. By default, this feature is enabled only when debugger is not attached (mostly release mode).
  • Reduced GA pressure put by the layout algorithm. Previously, every element measurement operation was represented by an object and the paging support was done via class hierarchy. New solution uses structs (which are value-types) and enums. This also makes the code more readable and easier to follow.
  • Added support for generating XPS files which are easier to print in the Windows environment. This was possible due to existing support in SkiaSharp. This change was proposed by sbrkich, thank you!
  • Documentation: added article about adding charts to QuestPDF documents. This article was written by donmurta, thank you!

# 2021.11

  • Added new Inlined element - put block elements along a line with line-breaking and page-breaking support. This element also supports various element placement in the horizontal axis as well as the baseline. It will help me in the future development, especially with text rendering optimization,
  • Introduced a new SkipOnce element - it can be used to hide content on the first occurrence of the parent. Useful in conjunction with the ShowOnce element. This change was proposed by jcl86, thank you!
  • Improved debugging experience by providing more detailed message when the DocumentLayoutException is thrown. This improvement is based on the discussion started by preiius, thank you!
  • Now it is possible to specify global, document-specific text style. This improves text style management and simplifies the typography pattern. This feature was proposed by JonnyBooker, thank you!
  • Added two overloads to the Image element. Now, you can provide an image as a filePath or a Stream. This improvement was suggested by pha3z. Thank you!
  • Improved text rendering performance.
  • Improved documentation examples for the ShowOnce and the EnsureSpace elements.
  • Improved text element: it does not throw an exception when an argument is null.
  • All new releases of QuestPDF will contain symbol packages. Let's welcome simplified debugging experience 🎉

# 2021.10

This update is focused on text rendering capabilities:

  • text paging support,
  • text background,
  • text stroke,
  • text underline,
  • changing text style within a run (e.g. size, font type, color),
  • inserting links in text,
  • inserting custom components in text, e.g. an image,
  • inserting page numbers in text (current page, total pages, page of location),
  • layout engine uses now more font-related metadata when rendering text (e.g. ascent, descent properties),
  • increased rendering performance by introducing short-living cache.

Breaking change:

  1. The old way of injecting page numbers was working correct, however was far from being ideal. I decided to change the API so to make everything more obvious and safe. The old slots approach has been removed and replaced by proper API invocations. Please find more details in the API Reference section.
.Text(x =>
{
    x.CurrentPageNumber();
    x.Span(" / ");
    x.TotalPages();
});
  1. Please notice that the text element supports paging now. That means, if there is not enough space, the text may be divided into separate sections on various pages. If this behaviour is not desired, you can use the ShowEntire element like so:
.ShowEntire()
.Text("Long text here.");

Additionally, the test coverage has been highly increased. No new bugs have been found 😃

# 2021.09

  • Added support for registering custom fonts. This way, the application can ship its own set of fonts that are independent of the hosting environment. Please refer to the Patterns and practices section for more details,
  • Fixed rendering documents with pages of dynamic size, including continuous pages,
  • Improved messages in exceptions regarding composing layouts using the Fluent API,
  • fixed detecting infinite layout exception in certain cases.

# 2021.08

This release mostly introduces a couple of additions requested by the QuestPDF community:

  • The ability to create documents with pages of various sizes, including continuous pages which are not restricted in height,
  • The PageNumber component supports now additional placeholders, such as total number of pages or page number of predefined locations. This addition is great for creating lists of content with interactive links,
  • Added new element: Unconstrained - it removes any size constraints and gives its child full freedom in terms of layout,
  • Added new elements: Scale, ScaleHorizontal and ScaleVrtical - they allow to change the scale of an included child, making content inside bigger or smaller than it will appear otherwise,
  • Added new elements: FlipOver, FlipHorizontal and FlipVertical - they allow to create a mirror image of the content in one or both axes,
  • Added new elements: RotateLeft and RotateRight - they allow to rotate the content by 90 degrees to the left or to the right, preserving space constraints,
  • Added new element: Rotate(degrees) - it allows to rotate its content. Important: this element does not preserve space constraints and elements put inside may be placed over other elements,
  • Added new elements: TranslateX and TranslateY - they allow to move content in both axes, preserving size constraints.

Additionally, this release includes some improvements to the engine used for generating code examples and their results. In the future, it will simplify creating examples and therefore will allow creating better documentation.

Breaking changes:

  1. PageNumber - the default placeholder storing current page number has changed. Please replace your code following this patter:
// change from:
.PageNumber("Page {number}")

// to:
.PageNumber("Page {pdf:currentPage}")
  1. The page settings are defined slightly differently. The page size is no longer defined in the DocumentMetadata class. The page margins have now predefined fluent API methods and do not rely on the padding element anymore. Please refer to the Getting Started section to see where this information should be placed.

# 2021.05

This release is the biggest one so far, offering a handful of new features and helpers:

  • Added new element: Box - it does not enforce parent size to its child,
  • Added new element: Grid - allows putting elements on the grid layout. Each element can take various number of columns. To big items will be moved to the next row,
  • Added new element: Canvas - allows drawing custom content using the SkiaSharp canvas element,
  • Added new element: EnsureSpace - makes sure that pageable content that according to the layout will take multiple pages, has enough space on each page,
  • Added new element: Layers - allows drawing content below and above the main layer, e.g. drawing text on top of the image,
  • Redesigned the Debug element - it does not only highlight space but also puts a small label,
  • Added set of predefined colors inspired by the Material Design system,
  • Added set of predefined fonts,
  • Improved the Row element - added spacing property similar to the one available in the Stack element,
  • Slightly adjusted available API (insignificant breaking changes).

# 2021.04

  • Added new element: Debug - this element can be used for inspecting its children and space taken by them,
  • Added new element: Element can be used for injecting dynamic elements (usually conditionally) without breaking the fluent API chain. This is practically syntactic sugar to simplify your code.
  • The AspectRatio element allows now to specify scaling rule: fitting width, height or available space.
  • The Image element supports now scaling rules: fitting width, height or available space, as well as scaling unproportionally.
  • Bugfix: the GeneratePdf(Stream stream) method does not close the output stream.
  • Bugfix: the AspectRatio element might now properly display pageable content.

# 2021.03

Added new element: ShowIf can be used for conditionally showing/hiding elements without using c# if-statement. This is practically a syntactic sugar to simplify your code.

Usability improvement: fluent API for changing text style does not mutate original style anymore, creates a copy instead with applied change.

Added possibility to render document as a set of images.

# 2021.02

Introduced new set of useful elements:

  • Internal links (redirecting user across the document, useful for creating table of contents),
  • External links (redirecting user outside the document, to the webpage),
  • Dynamic image (allows the developer to generate an image with very specific resolution).

Added support for font weights.

# 2021.01

It is never easy to spend hundreds of hours creating a library and then decide to make it free! But here is a time to share experience and knowledge, and be a part of the great open-source community, to help others create best experiences possible and innovate the world. The QuestPDF library is now published under MIT license 😃

# Bug fixes:

  • the Stack and the PageableStack elements do not apply spacing properly for children with zero height.
  • the Wrap element may not work properly when used inside PageableStack element.

# 2020.11

The first official release of the library. Containing all pieces required to successfully create and generate PDF documents.

← Quality assurance →