How does the Javascript print function work? Can I create a document using javascript and print it off?

Question

I know you can use window.print() to print the current page... but what I want to know is can I build a document using javascript in order to populate it with data and print it

Answer 1

My first thought:

You could create an iframe programmatically, assign the HTML to be printed, call the print() function on the context of the iframe.contentWindow, and then remove the iframe from the DOM:

function printHTML(input){
  var iframe = document.createElement("iframe"); // create the element
  document.body.appendChild(iframe);  // insert the element to the DOM 

  iframe.contentWindow.document.write(input); // write the HTML to be printed
  iframe.contentWindow.print();  // print it
  document.body.removeChild(iframe); // remove the iframe from the DOM
}

printHTML('
Test!
');

You can test the above snippet here.