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How To: Send Data Directly to an XPS Printer

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This topic describes how to send printer control data directly to printers that use XPSDrv 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 WritePrinter to send the data.
  5. Call EndDocPrinter to indicate that all data for this document has been sent.
  6. Call ClosePrinter to release the resources.

Send printer control data directly to printers that use XPSDrv printer drivers.

// 
//  RawDataToXpsPrinter - sends binary data directly to a printer 
//          with an XPSDrv Printer Driver 
//  
// 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 RawDataToXpsPrinter (LPTSTR szPrinterName, LPBYTE lpData, DWORD dwCount)
{
    BOOL     bStatus = FALSE;
    HANDLE     hPrinter = NULL;
    DOC_INFO_1       DocInfo;
    DWORD    dwPrtJob = 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;

        // Enter the datatype of this buffer.
        //  Use "XPS_PASS" when the data buffer should bypass the 
        //    print filter pipeline of the XPSDrv printer driver. 
        //    This datatype would be used to send the buffer directly 
        //    to the printer, such as when sending print head alignment 
        //    commands. Normally, a data buffer would be sent as the
        //    "RAW" datatype.
        //
        DocInfo.pDatatype = (LPTSTR)_T("XPS_PASS");

        dwPrtJob = StartDocPrinter (
                        hPrinter,
                        1,
                        (LPBYTE)&DocInfo);

        if (dwPrtJob > 0) {
                // Send the data to the printer. 
                bStatus = WritePrinter (
                hPrinter,
                lpData,
                dwCount,
                &dwBytesWritten);
        }
        
        EndDocPrinter (hPrinter);

        // Close the printer handle. 
        bStatus = ClosePrinter(hPrinter);
    }
    
    if (!bStatus || (dwCount != dwBytesWritten)) {
        bStatus = FALSE;
    } else {
        bStatus = TRUE;
    }

    return bStatus;
}

ClosePrinter

EndDocPrinter

EndPagePrinter

OpenPrinter

StartDocPrinter

StartPagePrinter

WritePrinter