Generating documents with various types of content is a common requirement for any text processing system. Typically those documents are invoices, reports, and other documents using an automated process. In this article, we’ll showcase how easy it is to insert common graphical content inside a rich formatted text with Nevron Rich Text for .NET using C# code. The article covers inserting barcodes, charts, and diagrams inside a document and generating a PDF, DOCX, RTF, or HTML document on the fly.

The first step to get started is to install Nevron Open Vision from the public download on Nevron’s website or to install the Nevron Open Vision package from NuGet. Then you can proceed with the writing code of the actual. We’ll use a .NET Core WPF application in this article, but the approach is the same for WinForms and ASP.NET projects. After creating a WPF Core application, you can drag and drop one of the NOV controls on the main window. For this project, we dropped the .NET NRichTextView control, which exposes a rich text view without any graphical user interface.

So having this brief description of the DOM, let’s write some code. Let’s start by adding a section that contains a paragraph:

richTextView.Document.Content.Sections.Clear();
NSection section = new NSection();
richTextView.Document.Content.Sections.Add(section);

section.Blocks.Add(new NParagraph("Welcome to our annual report."));
section.Blocks.Add(new NParagraph("Following is a table that shows our sales per year:"));

This code adds a new section to the document that contains two paragraphs. Then lets see how to create a simple table, having some dummy data:

double[] incomePerYear = new double[] { 674.9, 814.8, 852.9, 1, 213.1, 1, 043.9, 1, 096.4, 1, 381.1 };
string[] years = new string[] { "2011", "2012", "2013", "2014", "2015", "2016", "2017", "2018", "2019", "2020", "2021", "2022" };

// create a table
NTable table = new NTable();
table.Border = NBorder.CreateFilledBorder(NColor.Black);
table.BorderThickness = new NMargins(2);
table.AllowSpacingBetweenCells = true;
table.Columns.Add(new NTableColumn());
table.Columns.Add(new NTableColumn());
section.Blocks.Add(table);

NTableRow headerRow = new NTableRow();

headerRow.Cells.Add(new NTableCell(new NParagraph("Year")));
headerRow.Cells.Add(new NTableCell(new NParagraph("Income")));

table.Rows.Add(headerRow);

for (int i = 0; i incomePerYear.Length; i++)
{
NTableRow tableRow = new NTableRow();
tableRow.Cells.Add(new NTableCell(new NParagraph(years[i].ToString())));
tableRow.Cells.Add(new NTableCell(new NParagraph(incomePerYear[i].ToString())));
table.Rows.Add(tableRow);
}

With this code, we create a table with two columns named year and income. Of course, the data may vary, but the idea here is to illustrate how easy it is to create a table in a document. You must create a table object, add the number of columns, and add rows containing cells that match the specified number of columns. That’s all. Of course, as you would expect, there are many other features associated with tables, such as merged cells, border options, header rows, and further, which are outside the scope of this article.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s add a simple bar chart that visually displays the above data. We must first create a chart view object and add it to the text DOM using a special inline (NWidgetInline) that allows you to display any NOV control (barcode, chart, diagram, etc.) as scalable and interactive text content:

// create a chart view
NChartView chartView = new NChartView();
chartView.Surface.CreatePredefinedChart(ENPredefinedChartType.Cartesian);

// create a paragraph hosting the chart
NParagraph paragraph = new NParagraph();
NWidgetInline chartInline = new NWidgetInline();
chartInline.Content = chartView;
paragraph.Inlines.Add(chartInline);
section.Blocks.Add(paragraph);
Now after the chart is added to the text document lets add some data:
NSize size = new NSize(300, 200);
chartView.PreferredSize = size;

// configure title
chartView.Surface.Titles[0].Text = "Sales per Year";
chartView.Surface.Titles[0].Margins = NMargins.Zero;
chartView.Surface.Legends[0].Visibility = ENVisibility.Hidden;
chartView.BorderThickness = NMargins.Zero;

// configure chart
NCartesianChart chart = (NCartesianChart)chartView.Surface.Charts[0];
chart.Padding = new NMargins(20);

// configure axes
chart.SetPredefinedCartesianAxes(ENPredefinedCartesianAxis.XOrdinalYLinear);
chart.Margins = NMargins.Zero;
NBarSeries bar = new NBarSeries();
bar.LegendView.Mode = ENSeriesLegendMode.None;
bar.DataLabelStyle = new NDataLabelStyle(false);
chart.Series.Add(bar);
for (int i = 0; i ">" incomePerYear.Length; i++)
{
bar.DataPoints.Add(new NBarDataPoint(incomePerYear[i]));
}
NOrdinalScale scaleX = (NOrdinalScale)chart.Axes[ENCartesianAxis.PrimaryX].Scale;
scaleX.Labels.TextProvider = new NOrdinalScaleLabelTextProvider(years);
That’s it – now our control contains a bar chart with an ordinal (categorical) scale that visually shows the sales per year.
With this our simple document is almost complete – let’s add a footer with a barcode for a final touch:

// add barcode
NParagraph barcodeParagraph = new NParagraph();
barcodeParagraph.Inlines.Add(new NTextInline("Please scan to view more information:"))
NWidgetInline barcodeInline = new NWidgetInline();
NMatrixBarcode barcode = new NMatrixBarcode(ENMatrixBarcodeSymbology.QrCode, "https://www.nevron.com");
barcodeInline.Content = barcode;
barcodeParagraph.Inlines.Add(barcodeInline);
NHeaderFooter footer = new NHeaderFooter();
footer.Blocks.Add(barcodeParagraph);
section.Footer = footer;

Now our text document is complete, however, we still haven’t generated a text document. Fortunately, this is done with a single line of code:

richTextView.SaveToFile("c:\\temp\\SampleReport.pdf", new NPdfTextFormat());

This line of code will generate a PDF document that contains our document consisting of a table and chart. To generate another type of document – for example DOCX you just need to change the output format:

richTextView.SaveToFile("c:\\temp\\SampleReport.docx", new NDocxTextFormat());

For more advanced examples showing the capabilities of Nevron Rich Text for .NET please download the fully functional evaluation of Nevron Open Vision.

Founded in 1998, Nevron Software is a component vendor specialized in the development of premium presentation layer solutions for .NET based technologies. Today Nevron has established itself as the trusted partner worldwide for use in .NET LOB applications, SharePoint portals and Reporting solutions. Nevron technology is used by many Fortune 500 companies, large financial institutions, global IT consultancies, academic institutions, governments and non-profits.
For more information, visit: www.nevron.com.