Printing a PDF file with Electron JS

Question

I am trying to create an Electron JS app that has the purpose to print letter size PDFs.

This is my snippet of code for printing:

win = new BrowserWindow({
  width: 378, 
  height: 566, 
  show: true, 
  webPreferences: {
    webSecurity: false,
    plugins: true
  }
});

// load PDF
win.loadURL('file://' + __dirname + '/header1_X_BTR.pdf');

// if pdf is loaded start printing
win.webContents.on('did-finish-load', () => {
  win.webContents.print({silent: true, printBackground:true});
});

My issues are: if I have print({silent:true}) my printer prints an empty page. If I have print({silent:false}), the printer prints in the same way as the screenshot, with headers, controls, etc.

I need a silent print of the PDF content, and I can't manage to do it for days. Did anyone experience the same thing with Electron?

Answer 1

If you have already have the pdf file or you save the pdf before printing "I assuming it is", then you can grab the file location then you can use externals process to do the printing using child_process.

You can use lp command or PDFtoPrinter for windows

const ch = require('os');

switch (process.platform) {
    case 'darwin':
    case 'linux':
        ch.exec(
            'lp ' + pdf.filename, (e) => {
                if (e) {
                    throw e;
                }
            });
        break;
    case 'win32':
        ch.exec(
            'ptp ' + pdf.filename, {
                windowsHide: true
            }, (e) => {
                if (e) {
                    throw e;
                }
            });
        break;
    default:
        throw new Error(
            'Platform not supported.'
        );
}

I hope it helps.

Edit: You can also use SumatraPDF for windows https://github.com/sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf