This browser is no longer supported.
Upgrade to Microsoft Edge to take advantage of the latest features, security updates, and technical support.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(179.20000000000002, 77%, 27%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EH%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
I am trying to create an Azure Function App that merges a set of documents into a single PDF. I also need to convert some images to PDF and include those in the merged output file.
I have a working Power Automate Desktop flow that uses PowerShell scripts to run ImageMagick to convert images to PDF and GhostScript to merge all the PDF documents to a single PDF output file. I want to port my PAD flow and PowerShell scripts to an Azure Function App to hopefully speed up the runtime and response time to a Power Apps canvas app.
A bonus goal would be to fill .docx templates with data and convert them to PDFs first, then run the merge scripts and output the filled and merged document for consumption by Power Apps.
Let me simplify my question by focusing specifically on just the GhostScript aspect of this project. My issue is that when I try to run dotnet add package GhostScript.NET --version 1.2.3 I get the following output:
warn : NU1701: Package 'Ghostscript.NET 1.2.3' was restored using '.NETFramework,Version=v4.6.1, .NETFramework,Version=v4.6.2, .NETFramework,Version=v4.7, .NETFramework,Version=v4.7.1, .NETFramework,Version=v4.7.2, .NETFramework,Version=v4.8, .NETFramework,Version=v4.8.1' instead of the project target framework 'net6.0'. This package may not be fully compatible with your project.
I am using Azure Functions runtime version ~4 and .NET version 6.0.403. Here is what my .csproj looks like:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk"> <PropertyGroup> <TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework> <AzureFunctionsVersion>v4</AzureFunctionsVersion> </PropertyGroup> <ItemGroup> <PackageReference Include="GhostScript.NET" Version="1.2.3" /> <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Functions" Version="4.1.1" /> </ItemGroup> <ItemGroup> <None Update="host.json"> <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory> </None> <None Update="local.settings.json"> <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory> <CopyToPublishDirectory>Never</CopyToPublishDirectory> </None> </ItemGroup> </Project>
In my 'HttpTrigger1.cs' file, when importing GhostScript.NET with using GhostScript.NET; I get the following error:
The type or namespace name 'GhostScript' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)
Any ideas how I can correct these issues? I'm using VSCode to edit the project and GitHub for continuous deployment to the function app.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(211.20000000000002, 61%, 30%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EBS%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
The GhostScript.NET nuget package does not support .net core. The project appears to be dead. You could clone and update
https://github.com/jhabjan/Ghostscript.NET
Note: since this wrapper projects last update, the Ghostscript library has been rewritten.
Thanks for your answer! Hesitant to use dead repo...
Can I rephrase the question as: what's the fastest way to populate a .docx template with data and convert it to a PDF, then convert some images to PDF, and finally merge the PDFs into one document?
ImageMagick and GhostScript preferred, but happy to jump ship if there is a better way. Want to connect a script of some sort to a PowerApps canvas app such that these documents can be processed rapidly in real time.
Currently, we use a Power Automate flow to run the Word connector document template filler action, and then we use the OneDrive connector to first create a .docx file and then convert it to PDF. Then a Power Automate Desktop flow runs a PowerShell script which uses ImageMagick to reduce image resolution and convert any relevant images to PDFs and GhostScript to merge all the PDFs into the output PDF. And Power Automate finishes off the process once it detects the desktop flow has finished and the output file has synced with OneDrive. At that point the file is uploaded to the corresponding SharePoint list item and the canvas app shows the output PDF to the user. This takes two minutes!
I would be happy if I could make any substantial improvement in that runtime, but something on the order of five or ten seconds would be amazing. I was hoping an Azure Function App would be the ticket, but it has been quite a boondoggle just trying to figure out how to prep the function app for use of GhostScript, and I haven't even though about ImageMagick yet or about how to port over my PowerShell script to C#!!!
Yeah the Ghostscript 10.0 rewrite seems to break my scripts a bit. I think they still work but the output PDFs loose their formatting that I had configured to produce documents with consistent page sizes.
How hard do you think it would be to clone and update it to support .NET Core? Or should I just do that with Ghostscript 10?
All I know is ChatGPT just helped me write a console app from scratch in a language I've never used and successfully deploy it as an Azure Function App, so maybe it's not unimaginable that I could do this myself (or prompt engineer ChatGPT to do it for me anyway).
Yeah the Ghostscript 10.0 rewrite seems to break my scripts a bit. I think they still work but the output PDFs loose their formatting that I had configured to produce documents with consistent page sizes.
How hard do you think it would be to clone and update it to support .NET Core? Or should I just do that with Ghostscript 10?
All I know is ChatGPT just helped me write a console app from scratch in a language I've never used and successfully deploy it as an Azure Function App, so maybe it's not unimaginable that I could do this myself (or prompt engineer ChatGPT to do it for me anyway).