WebEngine Widgets PrintMe Example

Demonstrates how to print web pages using Qt WebEngine Widgets.

PrintMe demonstrates how to use the QWebEnginePage and QPrintDialog classes to print a web page. Further, it shows how to implement print preview by using the QPrintPreviewDialog class. For completeness, it also illustrates how to trigger a printing request within JavaScript.

Running the Example

To run the example from Qt Creator, open the Welcome mode and select the example from Examples. For more information, see Qt Creator: Tutorial: Build and run.

Simple HTML Page

In this example, we create an internal HTML page that is added as a resource collection file (.qrc). The page shows only a small HTML message box that explains how to trigger printing by using keyboard shortcuts or clicking a button. The button has the JavaScript onclick event attribute that calls the JavaScript window.print() function.

<html lang="en">
   <head>
      <meta charset="utf-8">
      <title>PrintMe</title>
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
      <script>
      function printNow() {
         window.print();
      }
      </script>
   </head>
   <body>
      <form class="form">
         <div class="header">
            <h1>Hello Paper World!</h1>
            <h2>Press Ctrl+p to print with print preview</h2>
            <h2>Press Ctrl+Shift+p to print without print preview</h2>
            <h2>Click the button to print using JavaScript</h2>
            <p class="button" onclick="printNow()">Print Now</p>
         </div>
      </form>
   </body>
</html>

Main Function

In the main function, we first instantiate a QWebEngineView and set the URL to our internal HTML page. Next, we create a PrintHandler instance and pass the requested page. For convenience, we also create keyboard shortcuts that can be used to call a print dialog or print preview dialog.

    QWebEngineView view;
    view.setUrl(QUrl(QStringLiteral("qrc:/index.html")));
    view.resize(1024, 750);
    view.show();

    PrintHandler handler;
    handler.setView(&view);

    auto printPreviewShortCut = new QShortcut(QKeySequence(Qt::CTRL | Qt::Key_P), &view);
    auto printShortCut = new QShortcut(QKeySequence(Qt::CTRL | Qt::SHIFT | Qt::Key_P), &view);

    QObject::connect(printPreviewShortCut, &QShortcut::activated, &handler, &PrintHandler::printPreview);
    QObject::connect(printShortCut, &QShortcut::activated, &handler, &PrintHandler::print);

Print Handler

In the PrintHandler class, we first implement printPreview(), where we instantiate QPrintPreviewDialog. We need the QPrintPreviewDialog::paintRequested handle to generate a set of preview pages.

void PrintHandler::printPreview()
{
    if (!m_view)
        return;
    if (m_inPrintPreview)
        return;
    m_inPrintPreview = true;
    QPrintPreviewDialog preview(&m_printer, m_view);
    connect(&preview, &QPrintPreviewDialog::paintRequested,
            this, &PrintHandler::printDocument);
    preview.exec();
    m_inPrintPreview = false;
}

Now we can implement the PrintHandler::printDocument() slot, which is called in response to the QPrintPreviewDialog::paintRequested signal. To do actual painting on a printer, we call the QWebEngineView::print() function. Printing is an async operation in Chromium, but not in Qt, so we run a local event loop using QEventLoop::exec() to make sure printing is done before returning. User input is blocked, since clicking on a button while we're waiting for the print to finish can mess up the internal state and cause a crash.

void PrintHandler::printDocument(QPrinter *printer)
{
    m_view->print(printer);
    // User input in the print preview dialog while we're waiting on a print task
    // can mess up the internal state and cause a crash.
    m_waitForResult.exec(QEventLoop::ExcludeUserInputEvents);
}

To get notified about the result of printing job, we implement PrintHandler::printFinished() slot as handler of QWebEngineView::printFinished() signal. We check for success and report any errors that occurred. Finally, we call QEventLoop::quit() to exit out of the local event loop.

void PrintHandler::printFinished(bool success)
{
    if (!success) {
        QPainter painter;
        if (painter.begin(&m_printer)) {
            QFont font = painter.font();
            font.setPixelSize(20);
            painter.setFont(font);
            painter.drawText(QPointF(10,25),
                             QStringLiteral("Could not generate print preview."));
            painter.end();
        }
    }
    m_waitForResult.quit();
}

The last function we implement, PrintHandler::print(), is trivial, because it simply opens QPrintDialog and calls the previously implemented PrintHandler::printDocument().

void PrintHandler::print()
{
    QPrintDialog dialog(&m_printer, m_view);
    if (dialog.exec() != QDialog::Accepted)
        return;
    printDocument(&m_printer);
}

Example project @ code.qt.io

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