The 3rd and 4th arguments of an overloaded version of ImportFromUrl are a username and password that can be used if the URL being opened is protected via Basic Authentication, as follows:

objDoc.ImportFromUrl( "http://www.server.com/script.asp", "landscape=true", "jsmith", "pwd" );

15.2.2 .NET Forms Authentication

Under .NET, the Username and Password arguments can instead be used to pass an authentication cookie in case both the script calling ImportFromUrl and a file being converted to PDF are protected by the same user account under .NET Forms authentication. To pass a cookie to ImportFromUrl, the cookie name prepended with the prefix "Cookie:" is passed via the Username argument, and the cookie value via the Password argument. The following example illustrates this technique.

Suppose you need to implement a "Click here for a PDF version of this page" feature in a .NET-based web application. The application is protected with .NET Forms Authentication:

<authentication mode="Forms">
  <forms name="MyAuthForm" loginUrl="login.aspx" protection="All">
    <credentials passwordFormat = "SHA1">
      <user name="JSmith" password="13A23E365BFDBA30F788956BC2B8083ADB746CA3"/>
       ... other users
    </credentials>
  </forms>
</authentication>

The page that needs to be converted to PDF, say report.aspx, contains the button "Download PDF version of this report" that invokes another script, say convert.aspx, which calls AspPDF.NET's ImportFromUrl. Both scripts reside in the same directory under the same protection.

If convert.aspx simply calls objDoc.ImportFromUrl( "http://localhost/dir/report.aspx", ... ), the page that ends up being converted will be login.aspx and not report.aspx, because AspPDF.NET itself has not been authenticated against the user database and naturally will be forwarded to the login screen.

To solve this problem, we just need to pass the authentication cookie whose name is MyAuthForm (the same as the form name) to ImportFromUrl. The following code (placed in convert.aspx) does the job:

C#

void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) { PdfManager objPDF = new PdfManager(); string strCookieName = "", strCookieValue = ""; ' Search for our authentication cookie for( int i = 0; i < Request.Cookies.Count; i++ ) { if( Request.Cookies[i].Name == "MyAuthForm" ) { strCookieName = Request.Cookies[i].Name; strCookieValue = Request.Cookies[i].Value; break; } } PdfDocument objDoc = objPDF.CreateDocument(); objDoc.ImportFromUrl( "http://localhost/dir/report.aspx", null, "Cookie:" + strCookieName, strCookieValue ); objDoc.SaveHttp( "attachment;filename=report.pdf" ); }

VB.NET

Sub Page_Load(Sender As Object, E As System.EventArgs) Dim objPDF As PdfManager = new PdfManager() Dim strCookieName As String = "", strCookieValue = "" ' Search for our authentication cookie For i As Integer = 0 to Request.Cookies.Count - 1 If Request.Cookies(i).Name = "MyAuthForm" Then strCookieName = Request.Cookies(i).Name strCookieValue = Request.Cookies(i).Value Exit For End If Next Dim objDoc As PdfDocument = objPDF.CreateDocument() objDoc.ImportFromUrl( "http://localhost/dir/report.aspx", Nothing, _ "Cookie:" + strCookieName, strCookieValue ) objDoc.SaveHttp( "attachment;filename=report.pdf" ) End Sub

Note that the cookie name is prepended with the prefix "Cookie:" before being passed to ImportFromUrl.

To simplify debugging, ImportFromUrl can be used in a debug mode. If the parameter Debug=true is used, ImportFromUrl returns a log of non-fatal errors encountered during the conversion process. A log entry consists of the entry type, such as "Image", "CSS", etc., error message, and relevant data, such as the invalid URL, unknown font name, etc. Log entries are separated by two pairs of CR/LF characters.

The following code snippet invokes ImportFromUrl in the debug mode and displays the error log:

string strLog = objDoc.ImportFromUrl( "http://www.server.com/script.asp", "debug=true" );
Response.Write( strLog );

A typical log string may look as follows:

Image: Error opening URL. HTTP Status Code: 404
Data: http://www.persits.com/image.gif

Font: Font name cannot be found.
Data: Arrial

One or more PdfGraphics objects can be designated as templates for a particular PdfDocument object by calling the method PdfDocument.AddTemplate. This method takes two arguments: an instance of the PdfGraphics object to be used as a template, and an optional list of parameters specifying which pages (by index) this template should be applied to, as well as the template's position and scaling on the pages.

The From and To parameters specify a 1-based range of page indices that this template is applicable to. By default, From is 1 and To is infinity. To specify multiple ranges, the pairs From1/To1, From2/To2, etc. should be used. Odd and even pages can be excluded from the selected ranges if the parameter Exclude is set to 1 and 2, respectively. If this parameter is set to any other number or omitted, no pages are excluded.

The location and scaling of the graphics template on the page are controlled by the optional parameters X, Y, ScaleX, ScaleY and Angle. X and Y are 0 by default, which corresponds to the lower-left corner of the page. In case the page is in landscape orientation, Angle should be set to 90 and X to the page width to properly position and orient the template.

A template is usually applied to multiple pages, and multiple templates can apply to the same page. Note that only newly added pages are subject to templating, but not existing pages. To cancel templating, the method PdfDocument.ClearTemplates should be called.