Printing to Microsoft print to PDF not working on hosted machine?

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Hi,

I am trying to print directly to the printer from server side by passing printer name to PrintDocuemt() object. Below codes works fine when running from localhost but gets stucked when running from hosted application on IIS. I am trying to print document to pdf using, microsofts default printer "Microsoft Print to PDF" in windows 10/

What I have tried:

C#

var doc = new PrintDocument();
               doc.PrintPage += new PrintPageEventHandler(ProvideContent);
               if (TempData.Peek("PrinterName") != null && TempData.Peek("PrinterName").ToString() != "")
               {
                   doc.PrinterSettings.PrinterName = TempData.Peek("PrinterName").ToString();
               }

               doc.Print();
               doc.Dispose();

Posted 6-Dec-18 20:59pm

Chirag Sudra

Updated 6-Dec-18 21:04pm

v2

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OriginalGriff · Answer 1 · 2018-12-06T21:04:00

Solution 1

Does the server have the PDF print driver installed? If its doesn't, then no, that's not going to work ...

Posted 6-Dec-18 21:04pm

OriginalGriff

Comments

Chirag Sudra 7-Dec-18 3:06am

PDF driver is on that machine and its working fine from other apps/print commands

OriginalGriff 7-Dec-18 3:15am

Then you need to start adding logging code to find out exactly what is happening.
For example, what's in TempData.Peek("PrinterName")?
What value is going in the PrinterName property?

Have you looked to see? Or did you assume they are correct because it worked in dev?

Chirag Sudra 7-Dec-18 3:51am

No, I have not assumed and already logged the printer name from TempData in text file & printer name is correctly passed to the printer object.

OriginalGriff 7-Dec-18 3:56am

You'd be surprised how many do assume ... :sigh:
(And if you have tried something, it's a good idea to tell us - along with any results: we can't see your screen!)

OK, so the printer name looks right. What exactly happens? Any exceptions, messages, crashes? Does it get into the event handler?

Chirag Sudra 7-Dec-18 4:00am

I'm invoking print method by Ajax call. There's not exception or warning/error message. It just gets stuck on doc.Print() line and as a result ajax call waits for response.

OriginalGriff 7-Dec-18 4:15am

A quick trawl of the Reference Source, says it may be a security problem: if it isn't the default printer (and I assume it isn't) and the PrintSettingsDialog isn't displayed (and it shouldn't be on a web app) Then it starts crawling the stack and checking security permissions:
https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#System.Drawing/commonui/System/Drawing/Printing/PrintDocument.cs,fd14c6ca79baa9bd
https://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/security/codeaccesspermission.cs,088ae839a8c7e684

So ... I think you are going to have to buck this one to your webserver admin / hosting service - it may be that IIS needs additional permissions to use the PDF driver (or it's output folder) and only they will be able to work out what is going on. May need to buck this a couple of levels above "tech support level 1" though!

I'd be very tempted to say "Sod it!" and dump the MS PDF writer in favour of a embedded C# writer class: there are quite a few on this site:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c%23+pdf+writer+site%3Acodeproject.com&oq=c%23+pdf+writer+site%3Acodeproject.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.663j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8