How do I get html of current page?

mikehsu317 · May 12th, 2005, 01:09 PM

I have a webform with a bunch of controls on it. I want to make a button that will save the page to a static place on my machine. I need to know how to get the html code for the current page so i can write it to a file.

pretty much a button on the form that does the same thing as the save as button in IE browser, except I am going to write in the location rather then the user.

thanks
Michael Hsu

planoie · May 12th, 2005, 01:45 PM

I don' think you'll be able to do this. What you are asking (in more generalized terms) is, "How do I write client-side script that allows me to write to the user's hard drive." This would be a major security risk if it was capable of happening. You'll have to write some kind of client-side control (activeX, java applet) that would be embedded into the page to do this.

Depending on what you expect the client audience to be, you might be able to do this with some other client-side scripting, like VBScript (if you're in IE) but I still think there will be serious limitations. Supporting this kind of capability leaves way too much open for malicious code.

-Peter

Hal Levy · May 12th, 2005, 02:17 PM

For making forms on the fly like this- you will want to look into Infopath.

{EDIT} I should add that Adobe has some pretty nice forms handling things also, using PDF's.. you might want to look into that.

Hal Levy
I am here to help you, not do it for you.
That is, unless you hire me. I am looking for work.

mikehsu317 · May 12th, 2005, 03:00 PM

I think you guys misunderstood my question.

I have a .aspx file that is in a certain format. I want to save that file locally and then covert it to a pdf which the user will be prompted to save that somewhere on their harddrive.

is that not possible?
I want to save the display as an html file that will be converted to a pdf.

Hal Levy · May 12th, 2005, 03:21 PM

No.

Create the PDF on the server, then send it over to the user in the browser- where then can easily save it from the client.

Hal Levy
I am here to help you, not do it for you.
That is, unless you hire me. I am looking for work.

mikehsu317 · May 12th, 2005, 03:47 PM

ya I'm going to create the PDF on the server and send it over, but I have to create the PDF based on something. I don't think I can create it from the web form so on the server side I want to save the page in html and then conver that to pdf, save it on the server, then send it over.

I want to make a html file based on what the webform is displaying.

Michael Hsu

Imar · May 12th, 2005, 03:59 PM

I don't think there is an (easy) way to get at the final HTML of the page (there may be ways, possibly using HttpHandlers maybe, or some other post loading events, but this will be difficult to implement).

However, you could recreate the entire page on the fly in memory. Instead of, say, adding a DataGrid to the ASPX portion of the page, you can create one on the fly and bind your data to it. Then you can use the following method to get the control's HTML in a string:

Code:

    public static string GetHtmlFromControl(Control aControl)
    {
      // Get the rendered HTML of a control
      StringBuilder SB = new StringBuilder();
      StringWriter SW = new StringWriter(SB);
      HtmlTextWriter htmlTW = new HtmlTextWriter(SW);
      aControl.RenderControl(htmlTW);
      return SB.ToString();
    }

I use this method quite a lot to send nicely formatted Html e-mail for error logging, shopping carts etc.

Check out the following article for more details: http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/091102-1.aspx

(My method is comes from this article).

Cheers,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Hal Levy · May 12th, 2005, 04:11 PM

What Imar said.

Hal Levy
I am here to help you, not do it for you.
That is, unless you hire me. I am looking for work.

mikehsu317 · May 12th, 2005, 04:27 PM

okay thanks guys

Michael Hsu