Print Friendly Page

Question

So I would like to be able to have a print button for entries in our database so users can print an entry via a print friendly "form".

My thought was to create a separate page, add labels and have those labels pull the relevant information.

I know I can add the open widget information via this code:

app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showPage(app.pages.TestPrint);

But I'm running into a few problems:

1. I can't get the page to open in a new window. Is this possible?

   window.open(app.pages.TestPrint);

Just gives me a blank page. Does the browser lose the widget source once the new window opens?

2. I can't get the print option (either onClick or onDataLoad) to print JUST the image (or widget). I run

   window.print();

And it includes headers + scroll bars. Do I need to be running a client side script instead?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

To get exactly what you'd want you'd have to do a lot of work.

Here is my suggested, simpler answer:

Don't open up a new tab. If you use showPage like you mention, and provide a "back" button on the page to go back to where you were, you'll get pretty much everything you need. If you don't want the back to show up when you print, then you can setVisibility(false) on the button before you print, then print, then setVisibility(true).

---

I'll give a quick summary of how you could do this with a new tab, but it's pretty involved so I can't go into details without trying it myself. The basic idea, is you want to open the page with a full URL, just like a user was navigating to it.

You can use #TestPrint to indicate which page you want to load. You also need the URL of your application, which as far as I can remember is only available in a server-side script using the Apps Script method: ScriptApp.getService().getUrl(). On top of this, you'll probably need to pass in the key so that your page knows what data to load.

So given this, you need to assemble a url by calling a server script, then appending the key property to it. In the end you want a url something like:

https://www.script.google.com/yourappaddress#TestPage?key=keyOfYourModel.

Then on TestPage you need to read the key, and load data for that key. (You can read the key using google.script.url).

---

Alternatively, I think there are some tricks you can play by opening a blank window and then writing directly to its DOM, but I've never tried that, and since Apps Script runs inside an iframe I'm not sure if it's possible. If I get a chance I'll play with it and update this answer, but for your own reference you could look here: create html page and print to new tab in javascript

I'm imagining something like that, except that your page an write it's html content. Something like:

var winPrint = window.open('', '_blank', 'left=0,top=0,width=800,height=600,toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,status=0');
winPrint.document.write(app.pages.TestPage.getElement().innerHTML);
winPrint.document.close();
winPrint.focus();
winPrint.print();
winPrint.close();

---

Hope one of those three options helps :)

Answer 2

So here is what I ended up doing. It isn't elegant, but it works.

I added a Print Button to a Page Fragment that pops up when a user edits a database entry.

Database Edit Button code:

app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showDialog(app.pageFragments.FragmentName);

That Print Button goes to a different (full) Page and closes the Fragment.

Print Button Code:

app.datasources.ModelName.selectKey(widget.datasource.item._key);
app.showPage(app.pages.ModelName_Print);
app.closeDialog();

I made sure to make the new Print Page was small enough so that Chrome fits it properly into a 8.5 x 11" page (728x975).

I then created a Panel that fills the page and populated the page with Labels

@datasource.item.FieldName

I then put the following into the onDataLoad for the Panel

window.print();

So now when the user presses the Print Button in the Fragment they are taken to this new page and after the data loads they automatically get a print dialog.

The only downside is that after printing the user has to use a back button I added to return to the database page.

Answer 3

1.

As far as I know, you cannot combine window.open with app.pages.*, because

window.open would require url parameter at least, while app.pages.* is essentially an internal routing mechanism provided by App Maker, and it returns page object back, suitable for for switching between pages, or opening dialogs.

2.

You would probably need to style your page first, so like it includes things you would like to have printed out. To do so please use @media print

ex: We have a button on the page and would like to hide it from print page

@media print {  
  .app-NewPage-Button1 {   
     display : none;   
   } 
}

Hope it helps.

Answer 4

1. Here is how it is done, in a pop up window, without messing up the current page (client script):

function print(widget, title){
  var content=widget.getElement().innerHTML;
  var win = window.open('', 'printWindow', 'height=600,width=800');
  win.document.write('<head><title>'+title+'/title></head>');
  win.document.write('<body>'+content+'</body>');
  win.document.close(); 
  win.focus(); 
  win.print();
  win.close();
}  

and the onclick handler for the button is:

print(widget.root.descendants.PageFragment1, 'test');

In this example, PageFragment1 is a page fragment on the current page, hidden by adding a style with namehidden with definition .hidden{display:none;} (this is different than visible which in App Maker seems to remove the item from the DOM). Works perfectly...

2. You cannot open pages from the app in another tab. In principle something like this would do it:

var w=window.parent.parent;
w.open(w.location.protocol+'//'+w.location.host+w.location.pathname+'#PrintPage', '_blank');

But since the app is running in frame nested two deep from the launching page, and with a different origin, you will not be able to access the url that you need (the above code results in a cross origin frame access error). So you would have to hard code the URL, which changes at deployment, so it gets ugly very fast. Not that you want to anyway, the load time of an app should discourage you from wanting to do that anyway.