Licensing

Sometimes, to study the system better, you want to dive into the code as fast as possible. To make this easier, GroupDocs.Comparison provides different purchase plans or offers a Free Trial and a 30-day Temporary License for evaluation.

Note
Note that there are several general policies and practices that guide you on how to evaluate, properly license, and purchase our products. You can find them in the “Purchase Policies and FAQ” section.

Free Trial or Temporary License

You can try GroupDocs.Comparison without buying a license.

Free Trial

The evaluation version is the same as the purchased one – the evaluation version simply becomes licensed when you set the license. You can set the license in a number of ways that described in the next sections of this article.

The evaluation version comes with the limitations:

  • Only first 2 pages can be processed.
  • Trial badges are placed in the document on the top of each page.

Temporary License

If you wish to test GroupDocs.Annotation without the limitations of the trial version, you can also request a 30-day Temporary License. For details, see the “Get a Temporary License” page.

How to set a license

Note
You can find the pricing information on the “Pricing Information” page.

After getting the license, you need to set it. This section describes different ways to set the license.

The license should be set:

  • Only once per application domain.
  • Before using any other of GroupDocs.Annotation classes.
Note
The license can be set multiple times per app domain but we recommend doing it once since all calls to SetLicense except first will just waste processor time.

Set License from File

The following code snippet shows how to set a license from file:

using GroupDocs.Comparison;
// ...

string licensePath = "path to the .lic file";
License license = new License();
license.SetLicense(licensePath);

Set License from Stream

The following code snippet shows how to set a license from a stream:

using GroupDocs.Comparison;
using System.IO;
// ...

string licensePath = "path to the .lic file";
using (FileStream fileStream = File.OpenRead(licensePath))
{
    License license = new License();
    license.SetLicense(fileStream);
}

Set Metered License

You can also set the Metered license as an alternative to license file. It is a new licensing mechanism that will be used along with existing licensing method. It is useful for the customers who want to be billed based on the usage of the API features. For details, please refer to the Metered Licensing FAQ section.

The following code snippet shows how to use Metered licensing:

using System;
using GroupDocs.Comparison;
// ...

string publicKey = ""; // Your public license key
string privateKey = ""; // Your private license key

Metered metered = new Metered();
metered.SetMeteredKey(publicKey, privateKey);

// Get amount (MB) consumed
decimal amountConsumed = GroupDocs.Comparison.Metered.GetConsumptionQuantity();
Console.WriteLine("Amount (MB) consumed: " + amountConsumed);

// Get count of credits consumed
decimal creditsConsumed = GroupDocs.Comparison.Metered.GetConsumptionCredit();
Console.WriteLine("Credits consumed: " + creditsConsumed);