Use Office File API on Linux
- 3 minutes to read
This tutorial describes how to create a simple Office File API application for .NET on Linux.
Prerequisites
.NET Core 3.1 / .NET 6.0 SDK or later
A code editor. This tutorial uses Visual Studio Code.
Libgdiplus library. This library is required to use
System.Drawing
in Office File API applications.Add the Mono repository to your system to install the latest libgdiplus version or use the corresponding terminal commands below (depending on your Linux distribution):
sudo apt install -y libgdiplus libc6 libc6-dev
Install the font libraries below (based on your Linux distribution) to measure, render, and export document text to PDF within your Office File API application:
sudo apt install -y fontconfig libharfbuzz0b libfreetype6
Tip
You can also install the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package to add Microsoft TrueType core fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, and so on) to your system. Run the following terminal command to install this package in Debian / Ubuntu and accept the license agreement:
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Optional. If your application needs to render JPEG images within PDF files, install the packages below based on your Linux distribution (or any other packages that implement the libjpeg API v6.2 or v8.0):
sudo apt install -y libjpeg-turbo8
Create an Application
Create a folder for you project (OfficeConsoleApp in this example) and open this folder in Visual Studio Code.
Click View → Terminal in the main menu to open the integrated terminal. Use the dotnet new command to create a new console application.
dotnet new console
This command adds the following files to your folder:
OfficeConsoleApp.csproj / OfficeConsoleApp.vbproj
Program.cs / Program.vb.
Add DevExpress.Document.Processor Package
Obtain your NuGet Feed URL and install the DevExpress.Document.Processor NuGet package as described in the following topic: Use NuGet Packages to Install Office File API Components.
Important
You need a license for the DevExpress Office File API Subscription or DevExpress Universal Subscription to use this package in production code.
Additional Packages
You can install the following packages depending on the features you use:
- DevExpress.Pdf.SkiaRenderer – to enable rendering of PDF page content within your app.
DevExpress.Drawing.Skia
– if you use theSystem.Drawing.Common
package version 6 (without theEnableUnixSupport
switch enabled) and higher.
Insert Code
Paste the code below in the Main method of the Program.cs file (or the Program.vb file’s Main procedure for Visual Basic). The following example converts a DOCX file to PDF:
using DevExpress.XtraRichEdit;
// ...
static void Main(string[] args) {
using (var wordProcessor =
new RichEditDocumentServer()) {
// Load a document from a file.
wordProcessor.LoadDocument("Document.docx", DocumentFormat.OpenXml);
// Export the document to PDF.
wordProcessor.ExportToPdf("PdfDocument.pdf");
}
}
Run the Application
Type dotnet run in the terminal window to run the program.
dotnet run
The following image illustrates the result: