Remote printing with LyciaWeb

Owned by Elena Sviridenko (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Aug 27, 2018 by Alexandr Kudentsov (Unlicensed)

LYCIA


There are two ways of a print job handling:

  • on the application server side,
  • on the client side.

Handle printing jobs on the application server side

In the following 4GL code example, the ‘report1’ outputs will be printed on the default printer on the application server side:

MAIN
START REPORT report1 TO printer
OUTPUT TO REPORT report1()
FINISH REPORT report1
END MAIN
REPORT report1()
FORMAT
ON EVERY ROW
PRINT "Printed by default printer on Application Server side."
END REPORT

For a printer to be accessible by the Lycia3 application server in the cloud, certain cloud print services/cloud-ready printers should be installed and configured.
Installation and configuration depend on the cloud services provider and are out of the scope of this article.

Handle printing jobs on the client side

It's also possible to generate a report on the application server and process its outputs (e.g. open in new tab, download and print) on the client side.
In the following example, the fgl_report_type() function and Report Viewer Config element of the Lycia Theme Designer are used to open report outputs in the new browser tab, download and print them on the client side via the corresponding menu command:

MAIN
MENU
COMMAND "NewTab"
CALL fgl_report_type("newTab","newTab")
START REPORT activity_report TO PIPE "newTab"
OUTPUT TO REPORT activity_report ()
FINISH REPORT activity_report


COMMAND "Download"
CALL fgl_report_type("download","download")
START REPORT activity_report TO PIPE "download"
OUTPUT TO REPORT activity_report ()
FINISH REPORT activity_report


COMMAND "Print"
CALL fgl_report_type("print","print")
START REPORT activity_report TO PIPE "print"
OUTPUT TO REPORT activity_report ()
FINISH REPORT activity_report


COMMAND "exit"
EXIT MENU
END MENU
END MAIN


REPORT activity_report()
FORMAT
ON EVERY ROW
PRINT "Processed on the client side."
END REPORT