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Printing documents to Microsoft XPS Document Writer without user interaction

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Now that the XPS storm has been started, people are generating XPS documents from all kinds of sources. Among different ways of XPS generation, the easily way is still through printing to the Microsoft XPS Document Writer (the MXDW printer driver).

If you're printing from your own applications, it's easy to specify MXDW as the printer driver and provide a file name for the XPS document to be saved to. But if you're using certain applications to print a documents, a print dialog box and a file save dialog box could pop up on screen, blocking attempts for fully automatic document conversion. 

For different document types, you can check Windows registry to find the command to print it. For example, the command to print an HTML page is:

rundll32.exe mshtml.dll,PrintHTML "<document>" "<driver>" "<device>" "<port>"

So you should be able to print any webpage to any printing device, to any printer/file, fully automatically. But this creates a security risk, so it has since been blocked. User confirmation is needed to print an HTML page through MSHTML.DLL.

But if you're willing to write some code, automatic document printing is still possible. Here is one solution:

#include <windows.h>

#include <strsafe.h>

const wchar_t * Dialog_Class = L"#32770";

HRESULT PrintHTML(const wchar_t * pUri, const wchar_t * pFileName)

{

    HRESULT hr;

    STARTUPINFO si = { sizeof(si) };

    PROCESS_INFORMATION pi;

    wchar_t command[MAX_PATH];

    hr = StringCchPrintf(command, _countof(command),

             L"rundll32.exe mshtml.dll,PrintHTML \"%s\"", pUri);

    if (FAILED(hr))

    {

        return hr;

    }

    if (CreateProcess(0, command, 0, 0, FALSE, 0, 0, 0, &si, &pi))

   {

        printf("\r\nStarting '%S'\r\n", command);

        CloseHandle(pi.hProcess);

        CloseHandle(pi.hThread);

    }

    DWORD size = _countof(command);

    GetDefaultPrinter(command, & size);

    printf(" Default printer: '%S'\r\n", command);

    printf("\r\nWaiting for Print dialog box\r\n");

    Sleep(5 * 1000);

    // Find Print Dialog box

    HWND hWnd = FindWindow(Dialog_Class, L"Print");

    // Print button

    HWND hChild = FindWindowEx(hWnd, NULL, NULL, L"&Print");

    GetWindowText(hChild, command, _countof(command));

    printf(" hwnd = %p %p('%S')\r\n", hWnd, hChild, command);

    // Press Print button

    SendMessage (hChild, WM_IME_KEYDOWN, 'P', 0);

   

    printf("\r\nWaiting for File Save dialog box\r\n");

    Sleep(5 * 1000);

    // Find Save File Dialog Box

    hWnd = FindWindow(Dialog_Class, L"Save the file as");

   

    hChild = FindWindowEx(hWnd, NULL, L"ComboBoxEx32", NULL);

    hChild = FindWindowEx(hChild, NULL, L"ComboBox", NULL);

    hChild = FindWindowEx(hChild, NULL, L"Edit", NULL); // File name edit control

    printf(" hwnd = %p %p\r\n", hWnd, hChild);

   

    // Enter file name

    SendMessage(hChild, WM_SETTEXT, NULL, (LPARAM) pFileName);

    Sleep(1000);

    // Find Save button

    hChild = FindWindowEx(hWnd, NULL, NULL, L"&Save");

    GetWindowText(hChild, command, _countof(command));

    printf(" hwnd = %p %p('%S')\r\n", hWnd, hChild, command);

    // Press Save button

    SendMessage (hChild, WM_IME_KEYDOWN, 'S', 0);

    printf("\r\nSaving to '%S'\r\n", pFileName);

    return hr;

}

 

The code uses CreateProcess to call rundll32 with the right parameters to start the printing process. It then waits for a while for the Print dialog box to pop up and fakes a click on the Print button. After that, it waits for the File Save dialog box to enter a destination file name and click on the Save button.

 

Here is how this routine can be called:

 

      PrintHTML(L"https://blogs.msdn.com/fyuan", L"c:\\fyuan.xps"); prefix="o" ?>

 

The code will generate enough logging information for you to see if things are working or not:

 

        

Starting 'rundll32.exe mshtml.dll,PrintHTML "http://blogs.msdn.com/fyuan"'   

      Default printer: 'Microsoft XPS Document Writer'

Waiting for Print dialog box

  hwnd = 0021075C 002B0754('&Print')

Waiting for File Save dialog box

  hwnd = 001E04A2 00260B72

  hwnd = 001E04A2 002D0BA6('&Save')

 

Saving to 'c:\fyuan.xps'

Note:

 

1) The code assumes MXDW is already the default printer driver. If this is not the case, you may want to add code to make it so before the Print dialog box pops up; or add code to mimic selection of MXDW as the printer driver.

 

2) The code uses fixed length wait for the Print dialog box and File SaveAs dialog box to pop up. This is not a very stable solution or it could take too much time. You may want to add better robust and efficient solutions.

 

3) The code is clealy very sensitive to OS version, application version, and UI language. You may need to find a more generic solution and a more robust solution.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 02, 2007
    PingBack from http://photoprintingblogs.info/printing-documents-to-microsoft-xps-document-writer-without-user/

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2007
    Hi Feng, Would it be possible to use the System.Printing namespace to print XPS documents? I was thinking that perhaps using it to print would be shorter. Best regards

  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2007
    hii Feng, Would it be possible to write a code which will just take the path from a location suppose "C:himanshuprinthtml.htm" and print a html file for me . if that so than please help me out

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2007
    Will the above code work in international builds of window?   It is searching for specific english strings (e.g. "Save the file as", and "Print").

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 21, 2007
    Thanks to your doc, it helped me a lot but... How can I print a pdf document without user interaction ? Thank you very much

  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2007
    the first time i read that page is very helpful for me. But can i ask 1 more question. How to make that C code above can install to IE. So i can use javascript or jsp to print a html page Thank in advance

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2008
    This is great information. Thank you for doing this.

  • Anonymous
    February 01, 2008
    I got a mail overnight asking about ways to automatically generate XPS from applications, specifically

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2008
    Hello Feng, Would you suggest a solution without the UI hacking? Appreciate,

  • Anonymous
    October 19, 2008
    Hi Feng Would Like to ask you one doubt? Can the xps document created from same file have different sizes on different machines? I am getting it, not sure its bug or thats the way it behaves?

  • Anonymous
    October 27, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2009
    The mshtml.dll,PrintHTML is okay, but the output isn't as good as the results obtained by printing normally through IE8.  For example, I have an HTML file with a long table that includes <thead> and <tfoot> sections that I'd like to see repeated at the top and bottom of each page.  IE8 produces the desired result (a multi-page table with the table header and footer table sections repeated on each page), but the mshtml.dll,PrintHTML method doesn't repeat the header or footer table sections.  What gives?

  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2009
    Sorry but I don’t share most of these ideas.

  • Anonymous
    April 19, 2010
    web page can be printed without user interaction

  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2010
    Can the xps work with the designjet printers. I have a Vista operating system that they didn't do drivers for Vista. How can I install this. Lindsey

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2010
    What do you need to do to get this to work on Windows7 64 bit?  It finds the print button ok but the hChild's come at as all 00000000...'s when looking for ComboBoxEx32, ComboBox and Edit.  

  • Anonymous
    June 13, 2011
    I think it's not stable & must use this app to print, other application cannot