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Servoy: print to screen/file/email/printer

I wanted a convenient way to manage giving the user a option to print any content to a screen preview, file, email or a printer for any print job in the solution. What I came up with is what follows.

First, you'll need a UI, mine looks like this (red text added to show global variables):

Servoy print screenshot

Then you need a method to show that as a dialog -- this one returns true if the user clicked OK, using a global to store the dialog result from the dialog itself:

PLAIN TEXT
JavaScript:
  1. var winloc = globals.dialog_getLocation();
  2. application.showFormInDialog(forms.print_SelectDestination,null,null,500,360,'Print',true,false,true);
  3.  
  4. if( globals.print_destination_result == 1 )
  5.     return true;
  6. return false;

Then you need a method to call to actually do a print job. Before doing the print job, you'll need to set the foundset set on the form you're planning on printing, then pass the form name to this method:

PLAIN TEXT
JavaScript:
  1. var frmName = arguments[0];
  2. var printCurrentOnly = ( arguments[1] == null || arguments[1] == true );
  3.  
  4. if( !globals.print_destination_select() )
  5.     return;
  6.  
  7. if( globals.print_destination == 'printer' )
  8. {
  9.     forms[frmName].controller.print( printCurrentOnly );
  10.     return;
  11. }
  12. if( globals.print_destination == 'pdf' )
  13. {
  14.     var f = "";
  15.     if( globals.util_isValidString( globals.print_destination_pdf ) )
  16.         f = globals.print_destination_pdf;
  17.     else
  18.         f = plugins.file.createTempFile( "preview", ".pdf" );
  19.  
  20.     var success = plugins.pdf_output.startMetaPrintJob();
  21.     if( success )
  22.     {
  23.         forms[frmName].controller.print(printCurrentOnly,false,plugins.pdf_output.getPDFPrinter() );
  24.     }
  25.     var pdf = plugins.pdf_output.endMetaPrintJob();
  26.     plugins.file.writeFile( f, pdf );
  27.     globals.util_openFile( f );
  28.     return;
  29. }
  30. if( globals.print_destination == 'email' )
  31. {
  32.     var success = plugins.pdf_output.startMetaPrintJob();
  33.     if (success)
  34.     {
  35.         forms[frmName].controller.print( printCurrentOnly,false,plugins.pdf_output.getPDFPrinter());
  36.     }
  37.     var thePdf = plugins.pdf_output.endMetaPrintJob();
  38.     var attachment1 = plugins.mail.createBinaryAttachment( 'output.pdf', thePdf );
  39.     var success = globals.mail_send( globals.print_destination_email_to, globals.print_destination_email_from, globals.print_destination_email_subject, globals.print_destination_email_body, null, null, new Array(attachment1) );
  40.     if( !success )
  41.     {
  42.         globals.dialog_error( "Unable to send mail." );
  43.     }
  44.     return;
  45. }

Of course, there's a few minor details I left out. You need to set the destination global in the dialog. You need a bit of UI coding to highlight and select destinations. You'll notice in the code that if you select PDF as a destination, and leave the filename blank, it will create a temp file and open it. It works very nicely, however.

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Servoy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Servoy: print to screen/file/email/printer”

  1. Jason Says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    Where is the authentication done for your smtp server? Do you hide that in your global method “mail_send” ?

  2. greg Says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    I wrap some built in Servoy methods in my own to provide flexibility in a solution. In this case, my “mail_send” method really just forwards to the built-in version. I usually configure mail authentication in the servoy.properties file on the server. You can’t set the smtp auth props through the preference window, but you can in the actual property file.

    g.

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