BroadPaper.Client 0.4.0

BroadPaper.Client

The .NET client for the BroadPaper render service: turn a saved report template and your data into a PDF, from C#, with no browser on the server.

BroadPaper is an embeddable report designer. Your users lay a report out in your web application; the designer hands your code a template as JSON; your application stores it. This package is how the other half happens — that same template, plus live data, rendered into a file on a schedule, in a background job, or in a controller.

Targets .NET 8 and .NET 10, because the runtime is your choice rather than ours.

Install

dotnet add package BroadPaper.Client

Register it

builder.Services.AddBroadPaper(o =>
{
    o.BaseUrl = builder.Configuration["BroadPaper:BaseUrl"]!;
    o.Token   = builder.Configuration["BroadPaper:Token"];
});

AddBroadPaper registers the client over a named HttpClient, so whatever pooling, logging, resilience and telemetry you have already configured applies to it too. Add your own handlers to the returned builder, or to the client named BroadPaperClient.HttpClientName.

Render

public sealed class ReviewController(BroadPaperClient broadpaper, IReviewStore store) : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet("clients/{id}/review.pdf")]
    public async Task<IActionResult> Review(string id, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        var review = await store.GetAsync(id, ct);

        var result = await broadpaper.RenderAsync(new RenderRequest
        {
            Template = JsonNode.Parse(review.TemplateJson),
            Data     = RenderRequest.ToNode(review.Data),
            Now      = review.AsAt,          // fixes the clock, for reproducible output
            Locale   = "en-GB",
            Currency = "GBP"
        }, ct);

        return File(result.Pdf, "application/pdf", $"review-{id}.pdf");
    }
}

The template and the data are your JSON documents, so they are taken as JsonNode rather than modelled in C#. Your schema is yours, and a strongly-typed mirror of it here would only be a second place to keep it up to date.

There is also RenderWithWarningsAsync when you want to log what the renderer could not do exactly as asked, RenderBatchAsync for one template against many data sets, and GetHealthAsync.

What it talks to

This is a client, not a renderer. It calls the BroadPaper render service — a Node process that owns the PDF engine — over HTTP. That separation is the whole reason a C# application can produce these files with no browser, no JavaScript runtime and no native PDF library installed on it.

Give it an https:// address in production. The service listens with plain HTTP and has no TLS of its own, because terminating TLS is the ingress's job; and it authenticates with a shared bearer token, which in clear text is the credential. Run it on your own network, and put TLS in front of it wherever a request crosses one you do not control.

Licensing

BroadPaper is free to evaluate, with no trial clock and nothing behind a feature gate. Everything works without a licence, for as long as you evaluate it. In the software, the only difference is that generated PDFs carry an evaluation mark, and a licence removes it; contractually, the licence is also what permits production use. No seats, no activation, no machine binding, no telemetry, and no call home at any point.

A licence is twelve months of unwatermarked commercial use, including every update released in those months.

• How licensing works
• Pricing
• Licence agreement

Documentation

• .NET client guide
• The render service
• Full documentation