Convert Documents Using AWS Lambda - C# .NET Core

This tutorial shows how to set up AWS Lambda for use with the LEADTOOLS SDK and convert a document with .NET Core.

Overview  
Summary This tutorial covers how to set up AWS Lambda for use with the LEADTOOLS SDK and convert a document with .NET Core.
Completion Time 60 minutes
Visual Studio Project Download tutorial project (781 KB)
Platform AWS Lambda .NET Core Application
IDE Visual Studio 2017, 2019, AWS Lambda Visual Studio Extension
Runtime License Download LEADTOOLS

Required Knowledge

Get familiar with the basic steps of creating a project by reviewing the Add References and Set a License tutorial, before working on the Convert Documents Using AWS Lambda - C# .NET Core tutorial.

Complete the AWS for Visual Studio Tutorial

To setup the development environment to use AWS in Visual studio, complete the following 2 tutorials from Amazon:

Once these tutorials are completed, the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio should be installed and a basic understanding of how to create a new AWS Lambda Project for .NET Core and publish to AWS should be acquired.

Create an Empty Function

In Visual Studio, create a new AWS Lambda Project (.NET Core - C#) Project. Give the project a name and location and click Create.

Select an Empty Function and click OK.

Add LEADTOOLS References

The references needed depend upon the purpose of the project. For this project, the following NuGet Package is needed:

Right-click the C# project in the Solution Explorer and select Manage NuGet Packages....

Browse for LEADTOOLS, then select the Leadtools.Document.Sdk NuGet package and install it. Accept LEAD's End User License Agreement.

For a complete list of which Codec DLLs are required for specific formats, refer to Files to be Included in Your Application.

Add the LEADRequest.cs Class

Right-click the C# project and select Add, then Class. Name it LEADRequest.cs and click Add.

Add the following to the using block:

C#
using Leadtools.Document.Writer;

Copy the code below to add the needed functionality to the class:

C#
public class LEADRequest 
{ 
   public string InputUrl { get; set; } 
   public DocumentFormat DocumentFormat { get; set; } 
   public LEADRequest() 
   { 
   } 
}

Add the LEADLambdaHandler Class

Right-click the C# project and select Add, then Class. Name it LEADLambdaHandler.cs and click Add.

In the new class, add the following to the using block:

C#
using System; 
using System.Diagnostics; 
using System.IO; 
using System.Net.Http; 
using Amazon.Lambda.Core; 
using Leadtools; 
using Leadtools.Document; 
using Leadtools.Document.Converter; 
using Leadtools.Document.Writer; 
using Leadtools.Ocr;

Copy the code below to add the needed functionality to the class:

C#
public class LEADLambdaHandler 
{ 
// Global Variables 
IOcrEngine ocrEngine; 
DocumentConverter documentConverter; 
static HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(); 
       
// Constructor which handles all initialization to make sure the function is as fast as possible once it's warmed up 
public LEADLambdaHandler() 
{ 
   InitEnvironment(); 
 
   Platform.LibraryPath = "/opt/native-runtimes/"; 
 
   InitLEADTOOLS(); 
} 
 
// Method which initializes the Lambda environment for use by the LEADTOOLS SDK 
void InitEnvironment() 
{ 
   // Set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH in function console to include: 
   // /var/lang/lib:/lib64:/usr/lib64:/var/runtime:/var/runtime/lib:/var/task:/var/task/lib:/opt/lib:/tmp 
 
   ExecuteBashCommand("ln -s /lib64/libdl.so.2 /tmp/libdl.so"); 
} 
 
// Initialize the LEADTOOLS SDK Classes 
void InitLEADTOOLS() 
{ 
   SetLicense(); 
 
   RasterDefaults.TemporaryDirectory = "/tmp"; 
 
   RasterDefaults.SetResourceDirectory(LEADResourceDirectory.Fonts, "/opt/ShadowFonts"); 
 
   ocrEngine = OcrEngineManager.CreateEngine(OcrEngineType.LEAD, false); 
   ocrEngine.Startup(null, null, "/tmp", "/opt/OcrLEADRuntime"); 
 
   documentConverter = new DocumentConverter(); 
   documentConverter.SetOcrEngineInstance(ocrEngine, true); 
} 
 
// Helper method for executing shell scripts in the Lambda environment 
string ExecuteBashCommand(string command) 
{ 
   command = command.Replace("\"", "\"\""); 
 
   var proc = new Process 
   { 
      StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo 
      { 
         FileName = "/bin/bash", 
         Arguments = "-c \"" + command + "\"", 
         UseShellExecute = false, 
         RedirectStandardOutput = true, 
         CreateNoWindow = true 
      } 
   }; 
 
   proc.Start(); 
   proc.WaitForExit(); 
 
   return proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd(); 
} 
 
// Set license code TODO: Replace the licString and developerKey with a valid license and key 
void SetLicense() 
{ 
   string licString = "[License]\n" + "License = <doc><ver>2.0</ver>`ADD LICENSE HERE`</doc>"; 
   string developerKey = "ADD DEVELOPMENT KEY HERE"; 
   byte[] licBytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(licString); 
   RasterSupport.SetLicense(licBytes, developerKey); 
} 
 
// Main conversion function 
public string ConvertDocument(LEADRequest request, StringWriter sw) 
{ 
   var isUrl = Uri.IsWellFormedUriString(request.InputUrl, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute); 
 
   if (isUrl) 
   { 
      var response = httpClient.GetAsync(request.InputUrl).Result; 
      if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode) 
      { 
         var stream = response.Content.ReadAsStreamAsync().Result; 
 
         using (var document = DocumentFactory.LoadFromStream(stream, new LoadDocumentOptions())) 
         { 
            string ext = DocumentWriter.GetFormatFileExtension(request.DocumentFormat); 
            string fileName = Path.Combine("/tmp", Path.ChangeExtension(Path.GetFileName(request.InputUrl), ext)); 
            DocumentConverterJobData jobData = DocumentConverterJobs.CreateJobData(document, fileName, request.DocumentFormat); 
            DocumentConverterJob job = documentConverter.Jobs.CreateJob(jobData); 
            documentConverter.Jobs.RunJob(job); 
 
            if (job.Errors.Count > 0) 
               foreach (var error in job.Errors) 
                  sw.WriteLine($"Error during conversion: {error.Error.Message} {error.Error.StackTrace}"); 
            else 
               return fileName; 
         } 
      } 
      else 
         sw.WriteLine("Download of URL is not successful"); 
   } 
   else 
      sw.WriteLine("Url is invalid."); 
 
   return null; 
} 
}

Set the License File

The License unlocks the features needed for the project. It must be set before any toolkit function is called. For details, including tutorials for different platforms, refer to Setting a Runtime License.

There are two types of runtime licenses:

Note

Adding LEADTOOLS NuGet and local references and setting a license are covered in more detail in the Add References and Set a License tutorial.

Update the FunctionHandler

When an AWS Lambda function is triggered, the FunctionHandler method is called. Everything in the Function class that is global will be called before that when the function is first starting up. While the container is warm, it will only call the FunctionHandler method until the execution context changes.

In order to leverage this functionality, most of the initialization code for the LEADLambdaHandler is done in the constructor to keep each function call as fast as possible while the container is warm.

Open the Function.cs file that was included as part of the project and add the following to the using block under the rest of the using statements.

C#
using System.IO;

Add the following global variable to the Function class:

C#
public LEADLambdaHandler LEADHandler = new LEADLambdaHandler();

Replace the FunctionHandler method with the one below to accept a LEADRequest as the input instead of a string input, and then call the LEADHandler.ConvertDocument method:

C#
public string FunctionHandler(LEADRequest request, ILambdaContext context) 
{ 
   StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); 
   try 
   { 
      string outputFile = LEADHandler.ConvertDocument(request, sw); 
 
      if (outputFile != null) 
         sw.WriteLine($"Successfully saved to {outputFile}."); 
      else 
         sw.WriteLine("Error occured. Output file not saved."); 
   } 
   catch (Exception ex) 
   { 
      sw.WriteLine(ex.Message); 
      sw.WriteLine(ex.StackTrace); 
      if (ex.InnerException != null) 
      { 
         sw.WriteLine(ex.InnerException.Message); 
         sw.WriteLine(ex.InnerException.StackTrace); 
      } 
   } 
   return sw.ToString(); 
}

Once all the code is added, build the project to ensure everything is working as intended.

Gather the Required Lambda Dependencies

Note

This step can be skipped if desired. The ZIP included in this project contains the required Lambda Dependencies already.

The LEADTOOLS SDK requires certain dependencies to be installed on a Linux machine in order to function properly. For a full list, see Getting Started with the LEADTOOLS Linux Libraries and Demo Projects.

AWS Lambda offers a Docker image that contains the same Linux distro to test functionality before deploying to Lambda. This can also be used to install the needed dependencies and create a deployment package. This requires Docker Desktop to be installed.

Create the Lambda Layer

The LEADTOOLS SDK requires environment dependencies to be installed in the Lambda function. In order to keep packages small and flexible, Lambda Layers are used. For more information on what a Layer is, refer to AWS Lambda Layers.

The LEADTOOLS SDK OCR Engine requires dependencies to be included with any OCR deployment. More information on what is required can be found at LEADTOOLS OCR Module - LEAD Engine Runtime Files.

Since the AWS Lambda environment is needed, Shadow Fonts will also be required. More information on the Shadow Fonts can be found at LEADTOOLS Drawing Engine and Multi-Platform Consideration.

Upload the Layer Zip File

Once the layer zip is created, it needs to be uploaded to AWS Lambda.

Publish Lambda Function to AWS

Once the layer is completed, the function can now be published to AWS.

This will run dotnet publish on the project and then zip up the files and dependencies and upload it to Lambda.

Reduce the Package Size

The package created in the previous step will be large since it will include a lot of the dependencies that were added to the layers. In order to reduce the size, the zip package will need to be modified and manually uploaded to Lambda.

This will update the function package so that it is as small as possible.

Change the Settings

Once the package is uploaded, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable of the function needs to be updated in order to properly load the dependencies.

Once the environment variables are set, the layers need to be added to the function.

Ensure that the memory of the function is set to 2048 MB:

Test the Function

Once the previous step is completed, the function is ready to be tested.

If everything was setup correctly, the Execution results should return succeeded and look something like:

Execution results returns succeeded

Wrap-up

This tutorial showed how to create a new AWS Lambda function, gather the needed dependencies, and publish it to AWS.

See Also

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