This page provides an introduction to using your own ScriptX.Services For On-Premise Devices to print pages from your own web apps.

Your web app does not need to be hosted on the same domain or server as ScriptX.Services. The service API allows calls from any origin - it is assumed therefore that your server is not exposed to the public internet or that you have appropriate security in place.

Client Installation

There is no client installation. ScriptX.Services for On-Premise Devices is a 'one-time' install to a suitable server. Updates to the system are to the single server and client library updates are automatically delivered to client devices: all the advantages of web based delivery.

The disadvantage may be ensuring the abilility to address required printers and also providing sufficient throughput for the number of concurrent print jobs there may be. If printers are centralised and there will not be a high concurrency of print jobs to a server then ScriptX.Services for On-Premise Devices is a compelling solution.

If you are a SASS provider with a public website providing services to customers with several users from each customer then customers may prefer to install ScriptX.Services for On-Premise Devices at their premises. All you will need to do is to determine a way for each customer to configure the javascript client code delivered by your app with their own On-premise server address. Our samples system illustrates this.

ScriptX.Services for Windows PC

ScriptX.Services for Windows PC must first be installed to each device (only Microsoft Windows Intel x64 PC) and a MeadCo ScriptX Client license deployed. Unlike with ScriptX.Add-on for Internet Explorer this has to be a separate process; it cannot be automated using a .cab based installer that is referenced by and delivered with the page.

Javascript can be used to detect if a service is available and if not the user then redirected to a suitable page that assists with installation of the required applications/services.

However, ScriptX.Services for Windows PC enables printing to any printer available to the PC and there will not be through-put issues from concurrent print jobs as by definition the device is "single user".

Please take a look at our services for Windows PC for more details.

To deliver a print experience to your users any page in your app that provides printing of the page must:

1. Reference the ScriptX.Services javascript library and dependencies (or write your own code to use the  Web API),
2. Add code to configure the library,
3. Add code to describe required settings such as margins, headers and footers,
4. Add a print button or other appropriate UI to your page,
5. Connect the print button click even, or appropriate UI event to the ScriptX.Services code using your favourite technique,
6. Done!

A worked example - this page

We'll do things in a slightly different order.

This page has a 'Download to PDF' button, as do other pages on the site. The download is obtained by using Cloud ScriptX.Services to `print` this document to a PDF and then provide the `printed file` as a download.

Working with an on-premise server is just the same, but with an on-premise server the printer may be a physical printer connected to the server so there would be no download for the user.

The UI :: the print button

The button is standard html styled with some Bootstrap css and Font Awesome:

<button type="button" 
    class="btn btn-primary d-print-none"
    id="btn_printPage">
    <i class="fas fa-cloud-download-alt"></i>  Download as PDF
</button>

Wire up an event handler

We won't use any library to help us though obviously we could as they all resolve to being an abstraction on the underlying DOM:

<script type="text/javascript" defer="true">
    document.getElementById("btn_printPage")
        .addEventListener("click",function(event) {
            console.log("Print button clicked");
        });
</script>

At this point we have a button which when clicked writes an information line to the console.

Reference the ScriptX.Services javascript modules

The client part of ScriptX.Services is written entirely in javascript and is delivered to client browsers in the usual way viz. a <script /> tag with src attribute referencing the location of the script.

The MeadCo ScriptX.Services print client modules are available for download from  Github . Packages are also available:  Yarn ,  Nuget .

Download and/or install a package and then add these javascript modules to the page:

<script src="/Scripts/MeadCo.ScriptX/meadco-core-1.15.1.js"></script>
<script src="/Scripts/MeadCo.ScriptX/meadco-scriptxprint-1.15.1.js"></script>
<script src="/Scripts/MeadCo.ScriptX/meadco-scriptxprinthtml-1.15.1.js"></script>

The sample code above has listed out each individual file for illustration. Your environment workflow will enable packaging these files as desired, or you may use a CDN:

CDN: <script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/scriptxprint-html@1.15.1/dist/meadco-scriptxservices.min.js"></script>

The whole of MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML is now available to the page.

Configure ScriptX.Services

ScriptX.Services client must be configured with the url of the ScriptX.Services server.

'use strict';
MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML.connect("http://<yourlocaldomain>/<yourOnPremServicesAppName>","");

or, and in preference, use an asynchronous connection to the server with a callback function to be called when the server connection is completed. Asynchronous initialisation is preferred as it does not block the browser UI.

'use strict';
MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML.connectAsync(
"http://<yourlocaldomain>/<yourOnPremServicesAppName>","",() => {});

Define print parameters and print

Finally, we can put everything together to print the page to the ScriptX.Services Server default printer.

'use strict';
document.getElementById("btn_printPage")
    .addEventListener("click", () => {
        let settings = MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML.settings;
        settings.header = "ScriptX.Print :: Browser Agnostic Printing";
        settings.footer = "&D&b&p of &P&b&t";
        settings.page.orientation =
        MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML.PageOrientation.PORTRAIT;

        settings.page.units = MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.MeasurementUnits.MM;
        let margins = settings.page.margins;
        margins.left = 12.5;
        margins.top = 12.5;
        margins.bottom = 12.5;
        margins.right = 12.5;

        // print is asynchronous
        MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML.printDocument(false);

        // say we're printing
        showBusyModal();

        // promise-less (i.e. callback) wait for the document to be returned
        // so we can then hide the we're printing dialog
        MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.WaitForSpoolingComplete(-1,
        (result) => {
            hideBusyModal();
            if ( typeof result === "string" )
                alert("An error occurred while printing\n\n" + result);
        });
    });

MeadCo.ScriptX.Print.HTML.connectAsync("http://<yourlocaldomain>/<yourOnPremServicesAppName>","", 
    function () { });

Done!

Complete the form and then print. Your form values will be included on the print.

Your name

Check and will be checked on print

  Download as PDF

Cloud printing!

The print buttons on this page use the MeadCo ScriptX.Services for Cloud to print and deliver the printed output as a PDF file. The code is exactly the same as would be used to ScriptX.Services for On-Premise Devices.

MeadCoJS Library and Asynchronous functions

Many developers have made use of our MeadCoJS Script Library availabe on GitHub  MeadCoScriptXJS . The library (optionally) uses modern promise based coding and provides wrappers for implementing asynchronous functions that we provided in ScriptX.Add-on. For example, the ubiquitous factory.printing.WaitForSpoolingComplete() is implemented albeit with a different function prototype.