Guide

How to trace PDF performance in C#

Enable PerformanceTrace, run the PDF workflow, then read or write the timing summary.

The trace API is diagnostic instrumentation. It helps identify expensive parser, page-tree, extraction, or application-defined scopes during development and performance investigations.

Trace a document workflow

Reset the trace before the measured work, enable it, run the workflow, then disable tracing before printing the summary.

using ZingPDF;
using ZingPDF.Diagnostics;

PerformanceTrace.Reset();
PerformanceTrace.SetEnabled(true);

using var pdf = Pdf.Load(File.OpenRead("input.pdf"));

_ = await pdf.GetPageCountAsync();
_ = await pdf.ExtractTextAsync();

PerformanceTrace.SetEnabled(false);

Console.WriteLine(PerformanceTrace.GetSummary());

Add a custom scope

Use Measure(...) around application work that belongs next to built-in ZingPDF timings.

using (PerformanceTrace.Measure("Import.InvoiceBatch"))
{
    using var pdf = Pdf.Load(File.OpenRead("invoice-batch.pdf"));
    await pdf.GetPageCountAsync();
    await pdf.ExtractTextAsync();
}

Enable from the environment

Set ZINGPDF_PERF_TRACE=1 before process startup to enable tracing without changing code.

set ZINGPDF_PERF_TRACE=1

Operational notes

The trace store is process-wide and static.
Call Reset() between measured runs so summaries do not mix separate workloads.
GetSummary(...) returns a formatted table. WriteSummary(...) writes the same data to a TextWriter.
Tracing is for diagnostics, not API-level timing guarantees.

Next step

For measured benchmark results, see the ZingPDF performance page.