iTextSharp does not render header/footer when using element generated by XmlWorkerHelper - itext

Question

I am trying to add header/footer to a PDF whose content is otherwise generated by XMLWorkerHelper. Not sure if it's a placement issue but I can't see the header/footer.
This is in an ASP.NET MVC app using iTextSharp and XmlWorker packages ver 5.4.4 from Nuget.
Code to generate PDF is as follows:
private byte[] ParseXmlToPdf(string html)
{
XhtmlToListHelper xhtmlHelper = new XhtmlToListHelper();
Document document = new Document(PageSize.A4, 30, 30, 90, 90);
MemoryStream msOutput = new MemoryStream();
PdfWriter writer = PdfWriter.GetInstance(document, msOutput);
writer.PageEvent = new TextSharpPageEventHelper();
document.Open();
var htmlContext = new HtmlPipelineContext(null);
htmlContext.SetTagFactory(Tags.GetHtmlTagProcessorFactory());
var cssResolver = XMLWorkerHelper.GetInstance().GetDefaultCssResolver(false);
cssResolver.AddCssFile(HttpContext.Server.MapPath("~/Content/themes/mytheme.css"), true);
var pipeline = new CssResolverPipeline(cssResolver, new HtmlPipeline(htmlContext, new PdfWriterPipeline(document, writer)));
var worker = new XMLWorker(pipeline, true);
var parser = new XMLParser();
parser.AddListener(worker);
using (TextReader sr = new StringReader(html))
{
parser.Parse(sr);
}
//string text = "Some Random Text";
//for (int k = 0; k < 8; ++k)
//{
// text += " " + text;
// Paragraph p = new Paragraph(text);
// p.SpacingBefore = 8f;
// document.Add(p);
//}
worker.Close();
document.Close();
return msOutput.ToArray();
}
Now instead of using these three lines
using (TextReader sr = new StringReader(html))
{
parser.Parse(sr);
}
if I comment them out and uncomment the code to add a random Paragraph of text (commented in above sample), I see the header/footer along with the random text.
What am I doing wrong?
The EventHandler is as follows:
public class TextSharpPageEventHelper : PdfPageEventHelper
{
public Image ImageHeader { get; set; }
public override void OnEndPage(PdfWriter writer, Document document)
{
float cellHeight = document.TopMargin;
Rectangle page = document.PageSize;
PdfPTable head = new PdfPTable(2);
head.TotalWidth = page.Width;
PdfPCell c = new PdfPCell(ImageHeader, true);
c.HorizontalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_RIGHT;
c.FixedHeight = cellHeight;
c.Border = PdfPCell.NO_BORDER;
head.AddCell(c);
c = new PdfPCell(new Phrase(
DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") + " GMT",
new Font(Font.FontFamily.COURIER, 8)
));
c.Border = PdfPCell.TOP_BORDER | PdfPCell.RIGHT_BORDER | PdfPCell.BOTTOM_BORDER | PdfPCell.LEFT_BORDER;
c.VerticalAlignment = Element.ALIGN_BOTTOM;
c.FixedHeight = cellHeight;
head.AddCell(c);
head.WriteSelectedRows(
0, -1, // first/last row; -1 flags all write all rows
0, // left offset
// ** bottom** yPos of the table
page.Height - cellHeight + head.TotalHeight,
writer.DirectContent
);
}
}

Answer 1

Feeling angry and stupid for having lost more than two hours of my life to Windows 8.1! Apparently the built in PDF Reader app isn't competent enough to show 'Headers'/'Footers'. Installed Foxit Reader and opened the output and it shows the Headers allright!
I guess I should try with Adobe Reader too!!!
UPDATES:
I tried opening the generated PDF in Adobe Acrobat reader and finally saw some errors. This made me look at the HTML that I was sending to the XMLWorkerHelper more closely. The structure of the HTML had <div>s inside <table>s and that was tripping up the generated PDF. I cleaned up the HTML to ensure <table> inside <table> and thereafter the PDF came out clean in all readers.
Long story short, the code above is fine, but if you are testing for PDF's correctness, have Adobe Acrobat Reader handy at a minimum. Other readers behave unpredictably as in either not reporting errors or incorrectly rendering the PDF.