If we attempt to generate a pdf from running within Visual Studio (using IIS EXpress), then it is not loading the CSS or Images. I suspect this is down to the BaseUrl.

It is being set to the website address of: http://localhost:52012/

Our html is coming out fine. I can see in the IIS Express logs, that when we hit the endpoint to just produce the html, then it is doing a GET on the CSS and Images just fine (status 200), but when I change the endpoint to then render the same Html as a pdf, then there is nothing in the IIS EXpress logs to show that it is even making a request to http://localhost:52012/ to get the CSS or images.

It works fine when released to a server. This is only an issue for us when running via Visual Studio.

Hi,

I am sorry but I don't have time to create a test project to send to you, but you can test this very simply.

We have some HTML with our logo image.

When running in Visual Studio, I can get it to both fail and to work. Note. The HtmlToPdf.Options.BaseUrl i set to "http://localhost:52012/"

Test 1 - FAILS

---

<div id="logo">
<img src="/content/kids/logo.png">
</div>

Test 2 - FAILS

---

<div id="logo">
<img src="http://localhost:52012/content/kids/logo.png">
</div>

Test 3 - SUCCESS

---

<div id="logo">
<img src="https://<our dev url>/content/kids/logo.png">
</div>


It seems to have a problem with "localhost"? Do you do something special / different with localhost??

yes of course. The HTML renders it fine, and you can see the image fine by directly putting the url in the browser. It is only Essential Objects (with local host) that seems to be an issue.

Did you test using Visual Studio with IIS Express with localhost url?

Is there any logging that we can turn on to see the raw url it is using to get the image? As our IIS logs show that it is not hitting IIS Express. i.e. your pdf generation is not using the url.

With your tests, can you reply with the IIS Express log file showing that it hits IIS Express to load the image (or CSS etc).

Are there any logging switches that we can turn on?

have sent an email to your support email with a test project that replicates the issue. I have received a security email that looks like it is from our exchange security to say that it has stripped code from the zip file. Our support teams are looking to see if they can send it unaltered.

Hi,

Thanks for the test project. We received the project and ran it here according to your instructions and everything seems to work fine. Specifically, both the logo image and the pageOne pageTwo background image are rendered correctly in the PDF file.

Our guess is that this maybe caused by some kind of network/security configuration on your computer that disallows rundll32.exe (this is Windows the process that we use to run the browser engine) from accessing local resources. There are a few things you can try:

1. Try the same test on a different machine;

2. Try to use the following code and see what you get:



If it works correctly, it should give you the image in the result PDF file. If it does not, you should either receive an exception or a PDF file that contains an error message, which may provide you additional information about exactly what's causing the problem.

Thanks!

Hi,

Error code -138 is Chromium's NETWORK_ACCESS_DENIED, which corresponds to Windows socket error WSAEACCES and it usually indicates that you have a Windows firewall setting/rule somewhere that explicitly blocks such connection (from localhost to localhost:52012 for process rundll32.exe). Once you resolve that this should work.

Thanks!

Hi,

Unfortunately there is no way to disable that. Chromium automatically uses IPV6 whenever possible. There used to have a way to disable it but Chromium has explicitly removed the support for this more than 2 years ago:

https://codereview.chromium.org/1149303005

Thanks!