How to print a PDF with C#

Question

I´ve trying to solve this problem for nearly 2 days. There are a lot of more or fewer good solutions on the net, but not a single one fits my task perfectly.

Answer 1

The most flexible, easiest and best performing method I could find was using GhostScript. It can print to windows printers directly by printer name.

"C:\Program Files\gs\gs9.07\bin\gswin64c.exe" -dPrinted -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=mswinpr2 -dNoCancel -sOutputFile="%printer%printer name" "pdfdocument.pdf"

Add these switches to shrink the document to an A4 page.

-sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dPDFFitPage

Answer 2

What about using the PrintDocument class?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.drawing.printing.printdocument.aspx

You just need to pass the filename of the file you want to print (based on the example).

HTH

Answer 3

If a commercial library is an option, you can try with Amyuni PDF Creator. Net.

Printing directly with the library:
For opening a PDF file and send it to print directly you can use the method IacDocument.Print. The code in C# will look like this:

// Open PDF document from file<br>
FileStream file1 = new FileStream ("test.pdf", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
IacDocument doc1 = new IacDocument (null);
doc1.Open (file1, "" );
// print document to a specified printer with no prompt
doc1.Print ("My Laser Printer", false);

Exporting to images (then printing if needed):
Choice 1: You can use the method IacDocument.ExportToJPeg for converting all pages in a PDF to JPG images that you can print or display using Drawing.Image

Choice 2: You can draw each page into a bitmap using the method IacDocument.DrawCurrentPage with the method System.Drawing.Graphics.FromImage. The code in C# should look like this:

FileStream myFile = new FileStream ("test.pdf", FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
IacDocument doc = new IacDocument(null);
doc.Open(myFile);
doc.CurrentPage = 1;
Image img = new Bitmap(100,100);
Graphics gph = Graphics.FromImage(img);
IntPtr hdc = gph.GetHDC();
doc.DrawCurrentPage(hdc, false);
gph.ReleaseHdc( hdc );

Disclaimer: I work for Amyuni Technologies

Answer 4

You can use ghostscript to convert PDF into image formats.

The following example converts a single PDF into a sequence of PNG-Files:

private static void ExecuteGhostscript(string input, string tempDirectory)
{
    // %d will be replaced by ghostscript with a number for each page
    string filename = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(input) + "-%d.png";
    string output = Path.Combine(tempDirectory, filename);

    Process ghostscript = new Process();
    ghostscript.StartInfo.FileName = _pathToGhostscript;
    ghostscript.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;

    ghostscript.StartInfo.Arguments = string.Format(
        "-dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=png16m -r300 -sOutputFile=\"{0}\" \"{1}\"", output, input);

    ghostscript.Start();
    ghostscript.WaitForExit();
}

If you prefer to use Adobe Reader instead you can hide its window:

process.StartInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;

Answer 5

I know that the tag has Windows Forms; however, due to the general title, some people might be wondering if they may use that namespace with a WPF application -- they may.

Here's code:

var file = File.ReadAllBytes(pdfFilePath);
var printQueue = LocalPrintServer.GetDefaultPrintQueue();

using (var job = printQueue.AddJob())
using (var stream = job.JobStream)
{
    stream.Write(file, 0, file.Length);
}

Now, this namespace must be used with a WPF application. It does not play well with ASP.NET or Windows Service. It should not be used with Windows Forms, as it has System.Drawing.Printing. I don't have a single issue with my PDF printing using the above code.

Note that if your printer does not support Direct Printing for PDF files, this won't work.

Answer 6

I found a slightly different version of your code that uses the printto verb. I didn't try it, but maybe it helps you:

http://vbcity.com/forums/t/149141.aspx