BBj Form Printing By Jason Foutz PDF Format

The new printer system provides a complete object hierarchy that gives developers control over every aspect of printing - from selecting printers to how a line appears on a page. The BBjPrinter object allows the user to select a printer for BBj® Services to use and start printing. BBjPrinter allows developers to obtain a BBjPrintDoc, which represents the current document the program creates. The developer can then preview or print this document.

A BBjPrintPage represents a single page of the BBjPrintDoc. The BBjPrintPage object provides methods for creating and laying out lines, images, and blocks of formatted text. Using a BBjPrintPage, programmers can now create BBjPrintLine, BBjPrintImage, or BBjPrintParagraph objects.

The first step to using the new print system is to obtain a BBjPrinter. The BBjPrinter object represents a printer that BBj interacts with and provides configuration properties such as paper size, margin width, and orientation. Obtain the default printer object using the calls below:

LET myAPI!=BBjAPI()
REM Obtain an instance of a default BBjPrinter object
LET myBBjPrinter!=myAPI!.getBBjPrinter(0)

After obtaining a BBjPrinter, developers can then query for a list of all available printers on the servers or the client. Moreover, developers can change this instance of BBjPrinter to represent any other printer.

The second step is to create a BBjPrintDoc. Using the BBjPrinter object, obtain a new BBjPrintDoc using this call:

	
REM Get BBjPrintDoc for the selected printer
LET myBBjPrintDoc!=myBBjPrinter!.getPrintDoc(1)

The newly created BBjPrintDoc represents an empty document with which to work. This document represents a collection of pages, all of which are available for preview or printing.

The third step is creating a new page to work with by using this call:

REM Get a new page
LET myBBjPrintPage!=myBBjPrintDoc!.getNewPage()

This call creates the page; it does not add the page to the document. To add the page to the document, use this call:

REM Add the page to the document
myBBjPrintDoc!.addPage(myBBjPrintPage!)

Pages are the foundation of forms. Developers can add the page at any time and they print in the order of addition. Furthermore, the pages created can contain BBjPrintObjects such as BBjPrintParagraph and BBjPrintLine.

The BBjPrintObject provides all of the methods for laying out a page, such as setPosition and setSize. In addition to the other methods available in the BBjPrintObject, these two methods provide complete control over page layout. BBjPrintParagraph, BBjPrintLine, and BBjPrintImage all extend BBjPrintObject and their layout uses the same methods included in the BBjPrintObject.

After creating a page, the next step is to add a sampling of BBjPrintObjects to this page. The code sample below shows how to add text, construct a paragraph object, set its text, and add the paragraph back to the page.

REM  Get a new paragraph
LET para!=myBBjPrintPage!.newParagraph()

REM Set paragraph text
para!.setText("some sample text") 

REM Add print object to page
myBBjPrintPage!.add(para!)

The BBjPrintParagraph object automatically fits the text into the available space. The BBjPrintParagraph adjusts its height automatically to take up as much vertical space as necessary to fit all of the text on the page with a call to this method:

REM  Set paragraph auto adjust height
para!.setAutoAdjustHeight(1)

The paragraph object provides control over how the text flows on a page. If automatic height causes the text to use more space than looks appropriate, developers can set the size explicitly. In addition to sizing, paragraph justification is also available. For example, use the call below to make the text left justified:

REM  Set paragraph horizontal alignment
para!.setHorizontalAlignment(para!.LEFT_JUSTIFIED)

To add lines to the page, use this call:

REM  Get a new line
LET line!=myBBjPrintPage!.newLine()
line!.setPosition(new java.awt.Point(72,72))
line!.setEndPoint(new java.awt.Point(144,144))
REM  Add print object to page
myBBjPrintPage!.add(line!)

This call creates a simple diagonal black line. Use the API calls to set various properties such as thickness.

The final step looks at everything as a whole using the call:

REM  Print the document
myBBjPrintDoc!.preview()

Alternatively, use the following call to print the document:

REM  Print the document
myBBjPrintDoc!.print()

This article described how to construct a BBjPrinter object and used it to gather information about the printer. A BBjPrintDoc was used to create and preview a BBjPrintPage. This article also explained how to use the BBjPrintPage to construct several different kinds of BBjPrintObjects. Using this system, BASIS created the Purchase Requisition shown in Figure 1 (see sample code). The new BBjPrinter system gives developers a variety of powerful new tools to create professional forms. Developers can now use the uniform BBjPrintObject to add images, lines, and text to their forms.

Figure 1. BASIS Purchase Requisition.