Can a PDF file s print dialog be opened with Javascript

Question

I know how to open a webpage in a new window and add javascript so the print dialog pops up  Is there a way to do a similar thing with a PDF file

User · Answer

Yes you can     PDFs have Javascript support   I needed to have auto print capabilities when a PHP-generated PDF was created and I was able to use FPDF to get it to work   http   www fpdf org en script script36 php

User · Answer

I usually do something similar to the approach given by How to Use JavaScript to Print a PDF  eHow com   using an iframe   a function to house the print trigger    function printTrigger elementId        var getMyFrame   document getElementById elementId       getMyFrame focus        getMyFrame contentWindow print        an button to give the user access     an onClick on an a or button or input or whatever you wish   lt input type  quot button quot  value  quot Print quot  onclick  quot printTrigger  iFramePdf    quot    gt    an iframe pointing to your PDF     lt iframe id  quot iFramePdf quot  src  quot myPdfUrl pdf quot  style  quot display none  quot  gt  lt  iframe gt      Bonus Idea  1 - Create the iframe and add it to your page within the printTrigger     so that the PDF isn t loaded until the user clicks your  quot Print quot  button  then the javascript can attack  the iframe and trigger the print dialog   Bonus Idea  2 - Extra credit if you disable your  quot Print quot  button and give the user a little loading spinner or something after they click it  so that they know something s in process instead of clicking it repeatedly

User · Answer

I use named action instead of javascript because javascript often is disabled  and if it isn t it gives a warning   My web application creates a postscript file that then is converted with ghostscript to a pdf  I want it to print automatically because the user has already clicked on print inside my application  With the information about named actions from  DSimon above  I researched how to solve this  It all boils down to insert the string  Type  Action  S  Named  N  Print at the right place in the pdf   I was thinking of writing a small utility  but it has to parse the pdf to find the root node  insert  OpenAction with a reference an object with the action  and recalculate the byte-offsets in xref   But then I found out about pdfmark which is an extension to postscript to express  in postscript syntax  idioms that are converted to pdf by Adobes distiller or by ghostscript   Since I m already using ghostscript  all I have to do is append the following to the end of my postscript file     AUTOPRINT     objdef  PrintAction   type  dict  OBJ pdfmark    PrintAction   lt  lt   Type  Action  S  Named  N  Print  gt  gt   PUT pdfmark    Catalog   lt  lt   OpenAction  PrintAction   gt  gt   PUT pdfmark   and ghostscript will create the action  link it  and calculate the xref offsets   In postscript   is a comment and PrintAction is my name for the object   By looking at the PDF I see that it has created this   1 0 obj  lt  lt  Type  Catalog  Pages 3 0 R  OpenAction  9 0 R  Metadata 10 0 R  gt  gt  endobj  9 0 obj  lt  lt  S Named  Type Action  N Print gt  gt endobj   1 0 is object 1  revision 0  and 9 0 is object 9  revision 0  In the pdf-trailer is says that it is object 1 that is the root node  As you can see there is a reference from object 1   OpenAction to run object 9 revision 0   With ghostscript it s possible to convert a pdf to postscript  pdf2ps   append the text above  and convert it back to pdf with ps2pdf  It should be noted that meta-information about the pdf is lost in this conversion  I haven t searched more into this

User · Answer

Why not use the Actions menu option to set this    Do the following  If you have Acrobat Pro  go to your pages tab  right click on the thumbnail for the first page  and click page properties  Click on the actions tab at the top of the window and under select trigger choose page open  Under select action choose  Execute a menu item   Click the Add button then select  File   Print  then OK   Click OK again and save the PDF

User · Answer

if you embed the pdf in your webpage and reference the object id  you should be able to do it   eg   in your HTML    lt object ID  examplePDF  type  application pdf  data  example pdf  width  500  height  500  gt    in your javascript    lt script gt   var pdf   document getElementById  examplePDF     pdf print      lt  script gt    I hope that helps

User · Answer

If you know how PDF files are structured  or are willing to spend a little while reading the spec   you can do it this way   Use the Named Action  Print  in the OpenAction field of the Catalog object  the  Print  action is undocumented  but Acrobat Reader and most of the other major readers understand it  A nice benefit of this approach is that you don t get any JavaScript warnings  See here for details  http   www gnostice com nl article asp id 157  To make it even shinier  I added a second Action  URI  directing the reader to go back to the page that originated the request  Then I attached this Action to the first Named action using its Next field  With content disposition set to  inline   this makes it so that when the user clicks on the print link    It opens up Adobe Reader in the same tab and loads the file It immediately shows the print dialog As soon as the Print dialog is closed  whether they hit  OK  or  cancel    the browser tab goes back to the webpage   I was able to do all these changes in Ruby easily enough using only the File and IO modules  I opened the PDF I had generated with an external tool  followed the xref to the existing Catalog section  then appended a new section onto the PDF with an updated Catalog object containing my special OpenAction line  and also the new Action objects   Because of PDF s incremental revision features  you don t have to make any changes to the existing data to do this  just append an additional section to the end

User · Answer

Just figured out how to do this within the PDF itself - if you have acrobat pro  go to your pages tab  right click on the thumbnail for the first page  and click page properties  Click on the actions tab at the top of the window and under select trigger choose page open  Under select action choose  run a javascript   Then in the javascript window  type this   this print  bUI  false  bSilent  true  bShrinkToFit  true      This will print your document without a dialogue to the default printer on your machine  If you want the print dialog  just change bUI to true  bSilent to false  and optionally  remove the shrink to fit parameter    Auto-printing PDF

User · Answer

Embed code example    lt object type  application pdf  data  example pdf  width  100   height  100   id  examplePDF  name  examplePDF  gt  lt param name  src  value  example pdf   gt  lt  object gt    lt script gt     examplePDF printWithDialog     lt  script gt    May have to fool around with the ids names  Using adobe reader

User · Answer

Another solution    lt input type  button  value  Print  onclick  document getElementById  PDFtoPrint   focus    document getElementById  PDFtoPrint   contentWindow print     gt

User · Answer

If you are using the prawn gem for Ruby on Rails to generate your PDF  you can use the following additional gem to active the print dialog   prawn-print

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