Control printer output

Comments

• nicocizik

  January 2017 edited January 2017

  Hi Sergio,
  
  See the following article on how to detect if a user printed to the
  printer. Once this occurs, you should be able to restrict the data your
  user has access to.
  
  http://www.digital-metaphors.com/rbWiki/Output/Printer/Detecting_Whether_Report_Printed_to_Printer
  
  

  Best Regards,
  
  Nico Cizik
  Digital Metaphors
  http://www.digital-metaphors.com
• rbuser

  January 2017 edited January 2017

  Sergio wrote:
  
  
  Years ago I had to do a similar thing in that I had to detect if:
  
  - the user actually sent output to printer, not to screen, file or
  archive
  - the user printed the entire range (not a sub range of pages)
  - the user did not cancel printing
  
  If all that was true, I had to assume it made it to the printer - that
  it was in the windows print spooler and would print ok.
  
  Because there were serious side effects if they printed the same
  document twice, when the printdialog closed I popped up a dialog box
  telling the user to "click ok if the printing succeeded, or cancel if
  printer jammed/failed".
  
  I never did bother to figure out if my print job successfully printed -
  I just made sure the end-users got used to waiting for the output!
  
  
  
  
  
  I had a TppReport in a form by itself (could/should have used
  datamodule)
  
  Here's the basic code I used for this:
  
  
  private
  FUserCancelled : Boolean; // did User Cancel print?
  FSentToPrinter : Boolean; // did report get sent to the
  printer, or just viewed/exported
  FPgSetting : TppPageSettingType;
  FPgRange : TppPageRangeType;
  
  
  
  //---EJB---2005.08.28-----------------------------
  procedure TfrmRepPSIView.ResetPrintStateFlags;
  begin
  FPgSetting := psFirstPage; // force to anything but "all" so we
  default to false
  FPgRange := prOddPages; // force to anything but "all" so we
  default to false
  FUserCancelled := False; // assume print not cancel
  FSentToPrinter := False; // assume not sent to printer
  end;
  
  procedure TfrmRepPSIView.ppReport1PrintDialogCreate(Sender: TObject);
  begin
  ResetPrintStateFlags; // reset again now because user can print,
  cancel, print again
  end;
  
  procedure TfrmRepPSIView.ppReport1PrintDialogClose(Sender: TObject);
  begin
  // we accept only sent to printer, but NOT if printtofile
  FSentToPrinter:= ( (ppReport1.PrintDialog.DeviceType='Printer') and
  not (ppReport1.PrintDialog.PrintToArchive) and
  not (ppReport1.PrintDialog.PrintToFile)
  );
  end;
  
  
  //---EJB---2005.08.28-----------------------------
  procedure TfrmRepPSIView.ppReport1Cancel(Sender: TObject);
  begin
  if ( Assigned(ppReport1.CancelDialog) and
  ppReport1.CancelDialog.Active and
  ppReport1.CancelDialog.Visible
  ) then FUserCancelled:=True;
  end;
  
  
  
  and called it with:
  
  frmRepPSIView.ResetPrintStateFlags;
  frmRepPSIView.ppReport1.Print;
  SentToPrinter := frmRepPSIView.WasSentToPrinterEx; // return
  whether or not this was sent to a printer
  DidUserCancel := frmRepPSIView.FUserCancelled; // return
  whether or not this print job got cancelled
  
  if ( SentToPrinter and (not DidUserCancel)) then
  if AskUserToWaitDialog then
  ...
  
  Cheers,
  EdB