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What is IronPdfEngine?

IronPdfEngine is a gRPC server which can handle IronPDF operation such as creating, writing, editing, and reading of PDFs. IronPdfEngine is a C# .NET application that build as a self-contained product, so it does not need .NET runtime to run.

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What is IronPdfEngine

  1. Introducing IronPdfEngine to reduce package size and dependency concerns
  2. Explore the versatility of the Engine
  3. Discover the reason behind the creation of IronPdfEngine
  4. Understand how IronPdfEngine addresses Docker issues
  5. Learn about the limitations of the Engine


Why we create IronPdfEngine

1. Expanded IronPdf to another Programming languages

As IronPdfEngine does not require the .NET runtime to run, we can extend the language compatibility of IronPdf to include other languages like Java and Node.js

2. IronPdf Deployment alternative

The Idea is you can run IronPdfEngine separately from you applications. This means your application does not need to bundle both Chrome and Pdfium binaries, making it more lightweight.

IronPdfEngine Docker

What is IronPdfEngine Docker

IronPdfEngine Docker is a pre-built, ready-to-run Docker image that runs IronPdfEngine inside and exposes port 33350 (by default) to allow IronPdf clients to connect.

Why we create IronPdfEngine Docker

  • Fixing deployment issues, the IronPdfEngine Docker container helps you avoid all deployment and dependency headaches.
  • Using IronPdfEngine Docker can reduce your application size
  • Your application instances can share a single IronPdfEngine as a PDF server!

How to get IronPdfEngine Docker

Please note

  • In IronPdf for .NET and IronPdf for Python using IronPdfEngine is optional
  • IronPdf for Java and IronPdf for Node.js need IronPdfEngine to run. By default it will spawn a subprocess that run IronPdfEngine in local environment. (localhost:33305) Or you can run IronPdfEngine Docker separately

IronPdfEngine Limitation

  • Currently, IronPdfEngine does not support horizontal scaling yet. (load balancing with multiple instances.) Because We store the processing PDF file binaries inside the server memory and use PdfDocumentId for communicating between server and client. This also minimize bandwidht usage and increase the processing speed.
  • To run IronPdfEngine Docker remotely, you need to make sure that IronPdfEngine port is reachable
  • IronPdfEngine Docker running on Linux x64 (Debian) using official ubuntu:22.04 based images, the PDF output may be a little bit different than running IronPdf in your local machine due to the different OS behavior.
  • Since IronPdfEngine Docker is Linux based so its need Linux Containers daemon. (select Switch to Linux Containers if your are using Windows)
  • IronPdfEngine binaries are not cross platfroms, so we build it foreach platfroms specificly.
  • Cross-version are not suppoted.