How to send a pdf file directly to the printer using JavaScript?

How to send a PDF file directly to the printer using JavaScript?

I found two answers in a forum:

<embed src="vehinvc.pdf" id = "Pdf1" name="Pdf1" hidden>
<a onClick="document.getElementById('Pdf1').printWithDialog()" style="cursor:hand;">Print file</a>

and

<OBJECT id = "Pdf2" name="Pdf2" CLASSID="clsid:CA8A9780-280D-11CF-A24D-444553540000" WIDTH="364" HEIGHT="290">
     <PARAM NAME='SRC' VALUE="file.pdf">
</OBJECT>
<a onClick="document.Pdf2.printWithDialog()">Print file</a> 

But my problem is that it just works on IE, and doesnt work in Firefox or Chrome.

Is there any solution for this?

Solution 1:

I think this Library of JavaScript might Help you:

It's called Print.js

First Include

<script src="print.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="print.css">

It's basic usage is to call printJS() and just pass in a PDF document url: printJS('docs/PrintJS.pdf')

What I did was something like this, this will also show "Loading...." if PDF document is too large.

<button type="button" onclick="printJS({printable:'docs/xx_large_printjs.pdf', type:'pdf', showModal:true})">
    Print PDF with Message
</button>

However keep in mind that:

Firefox currently doesn't allow printing PDF documents using iframes. There is an open bug in Mozilla's website about this. When using Firefox, Print.js will open the PDF file into a new tab.

Solution 2:

There are two steps you need to take.

First, you need to put the PDF in an iframe.

  <iframe id="pdf" name="pdf" src="document.pdf"></iframe>

To print the iframe you can look at the answers here:

Javascript Print iframe contents only

If you want to print the iframe automatically after the PDF has loaded, you can add an onload handler to the <iframe>:

  <iframe onload="isLoaded()" id="pdf" name="pdf" src="document.pdf"></iframe>

the loader can look like this:

function isLoaded()
{
  var pdfFrame = window.frames["pdf"];
  pdfFrame.focus();
  pdfFrame.print();
}

This will display the browser's print dialog, and then print just the PDF document itself. (I personally use the onload handler to enable a "print" button so the user can decide to print the document, or not).

I'm using this code pretty much verbatim in Safari and Chrome, but am yet to try it on IE or Firefox.