Printing Text Document using .NET 2.0 Code
Author : Sumit Gupta

I was making software recently that needs to print information from database. This information is simple text information that consists of name and address of customer with little more detail of it. Since I need to make it very simple using Crystal report won’t help me much. Also, just for learning you need to learn different things, I try to use Printing method of .NET 2.0 Framework. It goes all smooth with code I found for the same. First Add a PrintDialog box on your Windows Application that gives printing capability. Now Include a Object with its events in your code.

Private WithEvents doctoprint As New Printing.PrintDocument

Once we have these basic Set up now, we can simply copy paste given two function on page to Print document define in FILE_PATH constant.

Private Sub PrintDocument() PrintText.AllowSomePages = False PrintText.AllowSelection = False PrintText.ShowHelp = False PrintText.Document = doctoprint Dim result As DialogResult = PrintText.ShowDialog If result = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then Try streamToPrint = New StreamReader(FILE_PATH) doctoprint.DocumentName = "Title to Show on 'Now printing dialog'" doctoprint.Print() streamToPrint.Close() Catch ex As Exception MsgBox("Unable to print") End Try End If End Sub Private Sub doctoprint_PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs) Handles doctoprint.PrintPage 'change this line to change default font for printing. Dim printFont As New System.Drawing.Font("Arial", 10, System.Drawing.FontStyle.Regular) Dim linesPerPage As Single = 0 Dim yPos As Single = 0 Dim count As Integer = 0 Dim leftMargin As Single = e.MarginBounds.Left Dim topMargin As Single = e.MarginBounds.Top Dim line As String = Nothing ' Calculate the number of lines per page. linesPerPage = e.MarginBounds.Height / printFont.GetHeight(e.Graphics) ' Print each line of the file. While count < linesPerPage line = streamToPrint.ReadLine() If line Is Nothing Then Exit While End If yPos = topMargin + count * printFont.GetHeight(e.Graphics) e.Graphics.DrawString(line, printFont, Brushes.Black, leftMargin, yPos, New StringFormat()) count += 1 End While ' If more lines exist, print another page. If Not (line Is Nothing) Then e.HasMorePages = True Else e.HasMorePages = False End If End Sub
Now, simply call your PrintDocument() function to start printing of FILE_PATH using your Print Button or menu option.