Controlled printing for iOS in FileMaker

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If you use FileMaker iOS SDK, we can provide a few new print commands for iOS in the MBS FileMaker Plugin in version 14.2. The new PDFKit.SelectPrinter function allows you to pick a printer. And the PDFKit.Print function got extended to print PDF documents as well as images. You can configure printing with PDFKit.SetPrintSetting function.

Let's start with selecting a printer:

If [ Length ( PDFKit Print::PrinterURL ) > 0 ]
	Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SetPrintSetting"; "PrinterURL"; PDFKit Print::PrinterURL ) ]
End If
# show the dialog
Set Variable [ $userDidSelect ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SelectPrinter" ) ]
If [ MBS("IsError") ]
	Show Custom Dialog [ "Failed to show printer selecto…" ; $r ]
Else If [ $userDidSelect ]
	# and check what we got
	Set Variable [ $printerURL ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.GetPrintSetting"; "PrinterURL" ) ]
End If

This shows the printer picker dialog on iOS and we can pick a printer. If you had selected a printer before, the plugin would remember it. But if you had one stored in a field in the database, you may pre-select that one. After the user picked something, we store the prints in a variable/field.

To print, we need something to print. That may be a container with an image or PDF document. Or you have a file on disk which could be an image or PDF file again. If you have a PDF document in memory through PDFKit.NewPDFDocument, PDFKit.OpenContainer, PDFKit.OpenPath or PDFKit.OpenURL, you can also pass the reference number. This way you could assemble a PDF in memory and print it directly without storing it in a temporary file or a container field.

# Print
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("PDFKit.Print"; PDFKit Print::PrintItem) ]
If [ MBS("IsError") ]
	Set Field [ PDFKit Print::Result PDFKit Print::Result ; $r $r ]
	Show Custom Dialog [ "Failed to open file" ; $r ]
Else
	Set Field [ PDFKit Print::Result PDFKit Print::Result ; $r $r ]
End If

The printing can happen with or without dialog. If you skip the dialog using PDFKit.SetPrintSetting and the ShowsPrintPanel option being zero, you need to tell the plugin where to print to. For that, please pass the printer URL to the PDFKit.SetPrintSettingfunction for PrinterURL option.

The following script prints something from the container directly to the printer named LaserDrucker:

Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SetPrintSetting"; "ShowsPrintPanel"; 0 ) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SetPrintSetting"; "PrinterURL"; "ipp://Laserdrucker.local.:631/ipp/print" ) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SetPrintSetting"; "OutputType"; "Grayscale" ) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SetPrintSetting"; "JobTitle"; "Test" ) ]
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS( "PDFKit.SetPrintSetting"; "DuplexMode"; "LongEdge" ) ]
# show the dialog
Set Variable [ $r ; Value: MBS("PDFKit.Print"; PDFKit Print::FileContainer) ]
If [ MBS("IsError") ]
	Set Field [ PDFKit Print::Result PDFKit Print::Result ; $r $r ]
	Show Custom Dialog [ "Failed to open file" ; $r ]
Else
	Set Field [ PDFKit Print::Result PDFKit Print::Result ; $r $r ]
End If

As you see the printer URL includes the ipp prefix, the port number. To learn the printer URL, you can use the picker dialog above.

Please try the 14.2 plugin and see if this works for you. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions.

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