How do I print an HTML document from a web service?
- by Chris Marasti-Georg
I want to print HTML from a C# web service. The Web Browser control is overkill, and does not function well in a service-environment, nor does it function well on a system with very tight security constraints. Is there any sort of free .NET library that will support the printing of a basic HTML page? Here is the code I have so far, that is not running properly.
public void PrintThing(string document)
{
if (Thread.CurrentThread.GetApartmentState() != ApartmentState.STA)
{
Thread thread =
new Thread((ThreadStart) delegate { PrintDocument(document); });
thread.SetApartmentState(ApartmentState.STA);
thread.Start();
}
else
{
PrintDocument(document);
}
}
protected void PrintDocument(string document)
{
WebBrowser browser = new WebBrowser();
browser.DocumentText = document;
while (browser.ReadyState != WebBrowserReadyState.Complete)
{
Application.DoEvents();
}
browser.Print();
}
This works fine when called from UI-type threads, but nothing happens when called from a service-type thread. Changing Print() to ShowPrintPreviewDialog() yields the following IE script error:
Error: 'dialogArguments.___IE_PrintType' is null or not an object
URL: res://ieframe.dll/preview.dlg
And a small empty print preview dialog appears.
