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How To: Send Data Directly to a GDI Printer

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The code sample later in this topic shows how to send printer control data directly to printers that use GDI-based printer drivers.

The following steps describe how to send data directly to a printer. These steps are also illustrated in the code example that follows.

  1. Call OpenPrinter to get a handle to the printer.
  2. Initialize a DOCINFO structure with the printer data.
  3. Call StartDocPrinter to indicate that the application will be sending document data to the printer.
  4. Call StartPagePrinter to indicate that the application will be sending a new page to the printer.
  5. Call WritePrinter to send the data.
  6. Call EndPagePrinter to indicate that all data for the current page has been sent.
  7. Call EndDocPrinter to indicate that all data for this document has been sent.
  8. Call ClosePrinter to release the resources.

Send printer control data directly to printers that use GDI-based printer drivers.

// 
// RawDataToPrinter - sends binary data directly to a printer 
//  
// szPrinterName: NULL-terminated string specifying printer name 
// lpData:        Pointer to raw data bytes 
// dwCount        Length of lpData in bytes 
//  
// Returns: TRUE for success, FALSE for failure. 
//  
BOOL RawDataToPrinter(LPTSTR szPrinterName, LPBYTE lpData, DWORD dwCount)
{
    BOOL     bStatus = FALSE;
    HANDLE     hPrinter = NULL;
    DOC_INFO_1 DocInfo;
    DWORD      dwJob = 0L;
    DWORD      dwBytesWritten = 0L;

    // Open a handle to the printer. 
    bStatus = OpenPrinter( szPrinterName, &hPrinter, NULL );
    if (bStatus) {
        // Fill in the structure with info about this "document." 
        DocInfo.pDocName = (LPTSTR)_T("My Document");
        DocInfo.pOutputFile = NULL;
        DocInfo.pDatatype = (LPTSTR)_T("RAW");

        // Inform the spooler the document is beginning. 
        dwJob = StartDocPrinter( hPrinter, 1, (LPBYTE)&DocInfo );
        if (dwJob > 0) {
            // Start a page. 
            bStatus = StartPagePrinter( hPrinter );
            if (bStatus) {
                // Send the data to the printer. 
                bStatus = WritePrinter( hPrinter, lpData, dwCount, &dwBytesWritten);
                EndPagePrinter (hPrinter);
            }
            // Inform the spooler that the document is ending. 
            EndDocPrinter( hPrinter );
        }
        // Close the printer handle. 
        ClosePrinter( hPrinter );
    }
    // Check to see if correct number of bytes were written. 
    if (!bStatus || (dwBytesWritten != dwCount)) {
        bStatus = FALSE;
    } else {
        bStatus = TRUE;
    }
    return bStatus;
}

ClosePrinter

EndDocPrinter

EndPagePrinter

OpenPrinter

StartDocPrinter

StartPagePrinter

WritePrinter