Print Pdf Without adobe

Question

Hi,

I need to programmatically silent print a pdf file located in my file system without having external tools like adobe. I am currently using Gembox library to achieve this which requires a commercial licence. Is there any inbuild solution in WPF without using external tools or libraries?

Regards,
Subash C.

Answer 1

A way is to convert the .pdf to bitmaps with Windows.Data.Pdf
(by adding references to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\Windows.winmd
and
C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NETCore\v4.5\System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.dll)
then you can print the bitmaps silently

Answer 2

This test worked for me (10.0.19041.0 is my Windows 10 SDK version, should be changed if you have other versions) :

References :

// Add reference :  
// "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\UnionMetadata\10.0.19041.0\Windows.winmd"  
// "C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework\.NETCore\v4.5\System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime.dll"  

Test with a random pdf

LoadPdfDocument(@"E:\sample.pdf");  

Test Function to load the pages of pdf, then print them on the default printer

        private async void LoadPdfDocument(string sFile)  
        {  
            try  
            {  
                var storagePdfFile = await Windows.Storage.StorageFile.GetFileFromPathAsync(sFile);  
                Windows.Data.Pdf.PdfDocument pdfDocument;  
                pdfDocument = await Windows.Data.Pdf.PdfDocument.LoadFromFileAsync(storagePdfFile, "");  
                uint nPageIndex = 0;  
                while (nPageIndex < pdfDocument.PageCount)  
                {  
                    using (Windows.Data.Pdf.PdfPage pdfPage = pdfDocument.GetPage(nPageIndex))  
                    {  
                        using (Windows.Storage.Streams.InMemoryRandomAccessStream memStream = new Windows.Storage.Streams.InMemoryRandomAccessStream())  
                        {  
                            Windows.Data.Pdf.PdfPageRenderOptions pdfPageRenderOptions = new Windows.Data.Pdf.PdfPageRenderOptions();                             
                            await pdfPage.RenderToStreamAsync(memStream);  
  
                            var bi = new System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage();  
                            bi.BeginInit();  
                            //bi.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad;  
                            // using System.IO  
                            Stream inputStream = memStream.AsStream();  
                            bi.StreamSource = inputStream;  
                            bi.EndInit();  
  
                            // Test saving to file (use pdfPageRenderOptions to increase size for better quality)  
                            //BitmapEncoder encoder = new PngBitmapEncoder();  
                            //encoder.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(bi));  
                            //using (var fileStream = new System.IO.FileStream(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments) + @"\Page_" + nPageIndex.ToString("00") + ".png", System.IO.FileMode.Create))  
                            //{  
                            //    encoder.Save(fileStream);  
                            //}  
  
                            var dw = new DrawingVisual();  
                            using (var dc = dw.RenderOpen())  
                            {  
                                dc.DrawImage(bi, new Rect { Width = bi.Width, Height = bi.Height });  
                            }                             
                            var pd = new PrintDialog();   
                            pd.PrintVisual(dw, "Page_" + nPageIndex.ToString("00"));  
                        }  
                    }  
                    nPageIndex++;  
                }  
            }  
            catch (System.Exception ex)  
            {  
                MessageBox.Show("Error : " + ex.Message, "Error", MessageBoxButton.OK, MessageBoxImage.Error);  
            }  
        }