Save WF 4 workflow as Image - image

Question

The problem is that I am opening workflow designer dynamically from one shell application and I don't have reference to Canvas. I am able to save the WF4 as image but the image is not getting saved properly and contains left & top margins. I followed many articles to get it working but no success. I referred to following article as well.
Saving a canvas to png C# wpf
I am using the below function. I don't have any reference to canvas.
private BitmapFrame CreateWorkflowImage()
{
const double DPI = 96.0;
Visual areaToSave = ((DesignerView)VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(this.wd.View,
0)).RootDesigner;
Rect bounds = VisualTreeHelper.GetDescendantBounds(areaToSave);
RenderTargetBitmap bitmap = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)bounds.Width,
(int)bounds.Height, DPI, DPI, PixelFormats.Default);
bitmap.Render(areaToSave);
return BitmapFrame.Create(bitmap);
}
Please help on this.

Answer 1

I am able to resolve the issue by referring to again the following link
Saving a canvas to png C# wpf
I got the reference to canvas by using following code
Visual canvas= ((DesignerView)VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(this.WorkflowDesigner1.View, 0)).RootDesigner;
This has resolved the border/margin issue.

Answer 2

Please have a look here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/flow/archive/2011/08/16/how-to-save-wf4-workflow-definition-to-image-using-code.aspx
let’s look at how to generate an image of the workflow definition using the standard mechanism of WPF. After all, workflow designer canvas is a WPF control.
BitmapFrame CreateWorkflowDefinitionImage()
{
const double DPI = 96.0;
// this is the designer area we want to save
Visual areaToSave = ((DesignerView)VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(
this.workflowDesigner.View, 0)).RootDesigner;
// get the size of the targeting area
Rect size = VisualTreeHelper.GetDescendantBounds(areaToSave);
RenderTargetBitmap bitmap = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)size.Width, (int)size.Height,
DPI, DPI, PixelFormats.Pbgra32);
bitmap.Render(areaToSave);
return BitmapFrame.Create(bitmap);
}
The above C# method is very straightforward. Just get the workflow diagram part of the workflow designer and create an in-memory image of it using some WPF API. The next thing is simple: create a file and save the image.
void SaveImageToFile(string fileName, BitmapFrame image)
{
using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create))
{
BitmapEncoder encoder = new JpegBitmapEncoder();
encoder.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(image));
encoder.Save(fs);
fs.Close();
}
}
At last, let’s try to invoke the above 2 methods in the OnInitialized() method to hook it up and then close the application.
protected override void OnInitialized(EventArgs e)
{
// ...
this.SaveImageToFile("test.jpg", this.CreateWorkflowDefinitionImage());
Application.Current.Shutdown();
}