Printing Links

• Apr 04, 2019
• 3 minutes to read

This topic explains what the printing links are and how they are used to create documents that are ready to be previewed, printed and exported.

This topic consists of the following sections.

• Links Overview
• Using Links to Print Data
• Link Types

Links Overview

DXPrinting creates documents by linking data with templates (DataTemplate).

Depending on data provider, templates are either provided by a link or by an associated control (e.g., when printing DevExpress grids).

Using Links to Print Data

To create a document and publish it (print, export, or show it in a Document Preview window), perform the following steps.

1. Create a link according to the type of data (SimpleLink, CollectionViewLink or PrintableControlLink);
2. Call the required method of the PrintHelper class with the link instance passed to this method as a parameter.

All link types derive from the LinkBase class. From it, derives the TemplatedLink class that defines templates for the following document sections (that are similar to report bands in XtraReports).

• report header (TemplatedLink.ReportHeaderData and TemplatedLink.ReportHeaderTemplate);
• page header (TemplatedLink.PageHeaderData and TemplatedLink.PageHeaderTemplate);
• page footer (TemplatedLink.PageFooterData and TemplatedLink.PageFooterTemplate);
• report footer (TemplatedLink.ReportFooterData and TemplatedLink.ReportFooterTemplate);

Link Types

The following link types are available in DXPrinting.

• SimpleLink is used to create documents based on plain linear data. Its essential members are:

• CollectionViewLink provides extra options to print objects, which implement the ICollectionView interface.

• PrintableControlLink is specially intended to print DXGrid and Pivot Grid by DevExpress.

• LegacyPrintableComponentLink is intended to print DevExpress controls for Windows Forms that implement the IPrintable interface.

• CompositeLink allows you to combine content of several printing links in a single document. This link’s constructor accepts the collection of printing links (TemplatedLink descendants) to compose.

In addition to the above link types, you can create custom links inherited from the LinkBase class.

See Also

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