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How to print an Image

Hello, I have a windows service with a tcp listener that receives order numbers and then retreives a report over a web service as an image... It can be anything... Png, Tiff, whatever. Anyways I get the image as a byte array.

I want to send that image to the printer in a nice easy elegant way. If I just send the byte array to the printer using sockets... I get nothing but garbage. I don't know really understand or know how printing works at anything more than the highest levels. Here is my code where I'm ready to print. The part where i was using sockets is commented out. I have another part there where I create an Image object from the byte array.

Please shed some light for me on a nice way to send this Image object or byte array to the printer. I don't think importing system.windows.forms and using a picturebox is a very elegant way to go about it though it'd probably be simplest.

If objBytes.Length > 0 Then

Dim objStream As New MemoryStream(objBytes)
Dim objImage As Image = Image.FromStream(objStream)

'objSocket = New Sockets.Socket(Sockets.AddressFamily.InterNetwork, Sockets.SocketType.Stream, Sockets.ProtocolType.Tcp)
'objSocket.Connect(objEndPoint)

'If objSocket.Connected Then
' objSocket.SendTo(objBytes, 0, objBytes.Length, Sockets.SocketFlags.None, objEndPoint)
'End If

End If

Thanks, Tony

Fernando Soto

Hi picsnet;

This is a quick and dirty way to print the image as long as the image does not exceed the bounds of the page on the default printer.

' Class level variables
Private PrtDoc As PrintDocument
Private objImage As Image

Dim ImageName As String = "The Name of the Image"
Dim objStream As New MemoryStream(objBytes)
Dim objImage As Image = Image.FromStream(objStream)
' Create and print the document
PrtDoc = New PrintDocument
PrtDoc.DocumentName = ImageName
AddHandler PrtDoc.PrintPage, AddressOf PrtDoc_PrintPage
PrtDoc.Print()
RemoveHandler PrtDoc.PrintPage, AddressOf PrtDoc_PrintPage

Private Sub PrtDoc_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, _
ByVal e As PrintPageEventArgs)

Dim g As Graphics = e.Graphics

' The PointF is the location on the page where to place the
' upper left of the image on the page. Page 0, 0 is upper
' left corner of the page
g.DrawImage(objImage, New PointF(0, 0))

End Sub

Hope this gets you on the right track.

Fernando

picsnet

ASKER

I found code that looked pretty much exactly like that about an hour after I posted. The image is a report. I don't have much control on whether the report is 1 page... 2 pages... etc. It depends on the data. What happens if it is more than 1 page. How do I correct this?

Tony

Fernando Soto

This event handler will be called each time a page needs to be printed. You will need to set the e.HasMorePages to reflect if you have more to print or not.

Private Sub PrtDoc_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, _
ByVal e As PrintPageEventArgs)

Dim g As Graphics = e.Graphics

g.DrawImage(objImage, New PointF(0, 0))

' See if you have more to print, if so set to true
If I_Have_More_To_Print then
e.HasMorePages = True
Else
e.HasMorePages = False
End If

End Sub

Fernando

picsnet

ASKER

I know about the e.hasmorepages variable. I just don't really know how to make much sense of it though. You have to understand that I know nothing about this printing stuff. It seems way too complicated. I would think that the framework would take care of all this stuff. How am I supposed to know whether or not I have more to print? Aren't I going to have to split the image up into multiple parts and send each part to the print page method. If I draw the image for each page it seems like it is just going to draw the whole image over and over again.

I just can't believe that you just can't tell it to print and it'll print.

Tony

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Fernando Soto

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picsnet

ASKER

Hi, I went ahead and accepted cause you've been tons of help. I haven't looked into how hard it is yet... but I thought I'd go ahead and ask... You wouldn't happen to have any code handy that cuts an image up would you??

tony

Fernando Soto

No I do not do much Image processing, sorry :=(