One of the new features of Silverlight 4 is the printing API. This is really a huge thing because printing in previous version was really pain to do. So I decided to play around with the API to see what the possibilities are.
In my example I created a “Hello World” application that contains a textblock and a button. By pressing the button the system will print the screen.
XAML:
<Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”White”>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height=”auto” />
<RowDefinition Height=”auto” />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<StackPanel Margin=”10 ” Orientation=”Horizontal” Grid.Row=”0″ >
<TextBlock Name=”txtTextToPrint” Margin=”5″ Text=”Hello World! I am printing from Silverlight.”></TextBlock>
<Button Click=”Button_Click” Content=”Print”></Button>
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
Code behind:
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
PrintDocument pd = new PrintDocument();
pd.DocumentName = “SilverlightPrintTest”;
pd.PrintPage += new EventHandler<PrintPageEventArgs>(pd_PrintPage);
pd.Print();
}
void pd_PrintPage(object sender, PrintPageEventArgs e)
{
e.PageVisual = LayoutRoot;
}
Print output :
This code lets me print the whole screen that you see because I set the PageVisual = LayoutRoot. The PageVisual property excepts a UIElement so if you only want to print a specific control then you do e.PageVisual = nameOfYourControl. In fact in my sample the LayoutRoot is the root UEIlement of the page.
In my sample I use the new PrintDocument class. This class is located in the System.Windows.Printing namespace. The most important things on this class are the following 3 events:
- PrintPage: occurs each time a page is printing.
- StartPrint: occurs before the PrintPage event.
- EndPrint: occurs after the PrintPage event. Is mostly used to handle any errors that occurred during printing.
Mike Taulty has a more in depth sample in this blog post: http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2009/11/18/silverlight-4-rough-notes-printing.aspx
. Luckily there is an option in your Visual Studio 2008 project file that lets you compile views. This option is called MvcBuildViews.
