Question

I have to send to user a e-ticket. The e-ticket is information about event, schedule, row, place, barcode and other information.
I have two way:
1. Create html markup, fill all fields, generate pdf file from html and send user in mail attachments.
2. A desinger create template file in pdf format. And, I open it, fill information and send user.

I have never worked with pdf and I need to you advice. What way is the simply and less wasteful (in sense of load of the server, etc.)?

Thanks.

Answer 1

For my experience, you have pros and cons in both solutions:

Solution 1:

PROS: once you find out a good library for making the HTML->PDF conversion, you have a pretty flexible solution, given that you just have to change your HTML markup (pretty simple operation) to obtain a new PDF layout.

CONS: the operation of converting HTML 2 PDF can be CPU consuming (depend on the size and complexity of your HTML markup) and you’re gonna bind your solution to a 3rd party component

TIP: you could use http://www.html-to-pdf.net/

Solution 2:

PROS: it’ll need very low resource to couple toghether the layout and the data you need to put on it; morever you’ll only need a free library (iText.Net) that is considered to be the standard library to manipulate PDF documets.

CONS: it won’t be that flexible, ’cause you need to modify both the pdf layout and the code to fill it, in order to have a new e-ticket.

Conclusion

So, if you are planning to hange the layout of your e-tickets very frequently, go with the first one, otherwise, I’d choose the second option.