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Lesson 1 - Show the Print Preview for a Link

  • 2 minutes to read

This lesson illustrates how to create a basic printing link that creates an empty document, and how to create a Print Preview in a Windows Forms Application to show this document.

Tip

A complete sample project is available in the DevExpress Code Examples database at https://supportcenter.devexpress.com/ticket/details/e161/reporting-get-started-with-printing-library.

To create a Print Preview and show a document in it, do the following.

  1. Create a new Windows Forms Application in Visual Studio.
  2. To add a print preview to your application, switch to the application’s main form in Visual Studio, and press CTRL+ALT+X to run the Toolbox. Expand the DX.24.2: Reporting category and drop the DocumentViewer control onto the form.

    document-preview-windows-forms-toolbox

  3. Click the smart tag of the control, and in the invoked actions list, select a toolbar that matches the user interface style of the rest of your application. In this tutorial, the ribbon toolbar is preferred over the minimal bar interface.

    document-viewer-create-ribbon-toolbar

  4. To assign a document source to the control, click its smart tag again. In the drop-down menu of the DocumentViewer.DocumentSource property, expand the Standard Sources category and select PrintingSystem.

    document-viewer-select-document-source-standard-printing-system

  5. Press F7 to switch to the code view, and declare a new public class (called Lesson1), inherited from the Link class.

    using DevExpress.XtraPrinting;
    // ...
    
    public class Lesson1 : Link {
        public Lesson1(PrintingSystem ps) {
            CreateDocument(ps);
        }
    }
    

    Each subsequent lesson will create a class derived from the class created in the preceding lesson. Calling the Link.CreateDocument method will generate a document after making changes to it in code.

  6. Handle the main form’s Load event and add the following code to the event handler.

    using System;
    using System.Windows.Forms;
    using DevExpress.XtraPrinting;
    // ...
    
    private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e) {
        Lesson1 lesson = new Lesson1(printingSystem1);
    }
    

    In this code, the Printing System of the Document Viewer is passed, and assigned to the created printing link.

Launch the application and view the result.

document-viewer-ribbon-empty-document-result

See Also