Easiest way to add a Header and Footer to a Printing.PrintDocument (.Net 2.0)?

Question

What's the easiest way to add a header and footer to a .Net PrintDocument object, either pragmatically or at design-time?

Specifically I'm trying to print a 3rd party grid control (Infragistics GridEx v4.3), which takes a PrintDocument object and draws itself into it.

The resulting page just contains the grid and it's contents - however I would like to add a header or title to identify the printed report, and possibly a footer to show who printed it, when, and ideally a page number and total pages.

I'm using VB.Net 2.0.

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

The printdocument object fires the printpage event for each page to be printed. You can draw text/lines/etc into the print queue using the printpageeventargs event parameter:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.drawing.printing.printdocument.aspx

Dim it WithEvents when you pass it to the grid, so you can handle the event.

Answer 2

Following booji-boy's answer, here's what I came up with (which I've simplified for example purposes):

Private Sub btnPrint_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnPrint.Click

        Dim oDoc As New Printing.PrintDocument
        oDoc.DefaultPageSettings.Landscape = True
        AddHandler oDoc.PrintPage, AddressOf PrintPage

        oDoc.DocumentName = "Printout"

        InfragisticsWinGrid.PrintPreview(InfragisticsWinGrid.DisplayLayout, oDoc)

    End If
End Sub


Private Sub PrintPage(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs)

    ' Draw title
    e.Graphics.DrawString("Report Title"), New Font("Arial", 16), Brushes.Black, 95, 70)

    ' Draw footer
    e.Graphics.DrawImage(DirectCast(mResources.GetObject("footer_logo"), Drawing.Bitmap), 95, e.PageBounds.Height - 87)
    Dim drawFont As New Font("Arial", 8.75)

    e.Graphics.DrawString("Report Title", drawFont, Brushes.Gray, 190, e.PageBounds.Height - 90)
    e.Graphics.DrawString("Printed", drawFont, Brushes.Gray, 190, e.PageBounds.Height - 76)
    e.Graphics.DrawString("Printed By", drawFont, Brushes.Gray, 190, e.PageBounds.Height - 62)

    ' Draw some grid lines to add structure to the footer information
    e.Graphics.DrawLine(Pens.Gray, 246, e.PageBounds.Height - 90, 246, e.PageBounds.Height - 48)
    e.Graphics.DrawLine(Pens.Gray, 188, e.PageBounds.Height - 75, 550, e.PageBounds.Height - 75)
    e.Graphics.DrawLine(Pens.Gray, 188, e.PageBounds.Height - 61, 550, e.PageBounds.Height - 61)

    e.Graphics.DrawString("Report", drawFont, Brushes.Black, 250, e.PageBounds.Height - 90)
    e.Graphics.DrawString(Date.Now.ToShortDateString & " " & Date.Now.ToShortTimeString, drawFont, Brushes.Black, 250, e.PageBounds.Height - 76)
    e.Graphics.DrawString("Andrew", drawFont, Brushes.Black, 250, e.PageBounds.Height - 62)

End Sub

I had to play with the values of e.PageBounds.Height - x to get the drawn items to line up.

Thanks again Booji Boy for the pointer - getting at the ReportPage.Graphics() was exactly what I was after :o)