Selecting the input tray when printing XPS documents

There are many examples on the web of how to print an XPS document, and for the most part they are relatively simple. But when my application needed to do something crazy (like…I don’t know…tell the document which tray to print to), the myriads of how-to’s proved pretty much worthless. In fact, the only useful information I found on the subject was from a post on MSDN forums. This post proved extremely helpful, even containing a c# code sample that I could use almost as-is.

But when I got to the point of implementing that code, I hit a snag. It seems that the document would always print to the last tray on the printer, even though I was telling it to print to a specific tray. It turns out, there was a little bit of detail missing from the sample code, namely a namespace attribute that needs to be added to the xml document that comprises the PrintTicket. The URI for that namespace is likely to be different for each printer your application prints to, so you need to discover it at runtime.

Here’s the updated sample, with my slight modifications:

public static class XpsPrinterUtils { private static string GetInputBinName(string printerName, int binIndex, out string nameSpaceURI) { string binName = string.Empty; // get PrintQueue of Printer from the PrintServer LocalPrintServer printServer = new LocalPrintServer(); PrintQueue printQueue = printServer.GetPrintQueue(printerName); // get PrintCapabilities of the printer MemoryStream printerCapXmlStream = printQueue.GetPrintCapabilitiesAsXml(); // read the JobInputBins out of the PrintCapabilities XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument(); xmlDoc.Load(printerCapXmlStream); // create NamespaceManager and add PrintSchemaFrameWork-Namespace (should be on DocumentElement of the PrintTicket) // Prefix: psf NameSpace: xmlDoc.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/2003/08/printing/printschemaframework" XmlNamespaceManager manager = new XmlNamespaceManager(xmlDoc.NameTable); manager.AddNamespace(xmlDoc.DocumentElement.Prefix, xmlDoc.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI); nameSpaceURI = xmlDoc.ChildNodes[1].GetNamespaceOfPrefix("ns0000"); // and select all nodes of the bins XmlNodeList nodeList = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("//psf:Feature[@name='psk:JobInputBin']/psf:Option", manager); // fill Dictionary with the bin-names and values if (nodeList.Count > binIndex) { binName = nodeList[binIndex].Attributes["name"].Value; } return binName; } public static PrintTicket ModifyPrintTicket(PrintTicket ticket, string featureName, string newValue, string nameSpaceURI) { if (ticket == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("ticket"); } // read Xml of the PrintTicket XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument(); xmlDoc.Load(ticket.GetXmlStream()); // create NamespaceManager and add PrintSchemaFrameWork-Namespace (should be on DocumentElement of the PrintTicket) // Prefix: psf NameSpace: xmlDoc.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/2003/08/printing/printschemaframework" XmlNamespaceManager manager = new XmlNamespaceManager(xmlDoc.NameTable); manager.AddNamespace(xmlDoc.DocumentElement.Prefix, xmlDoc.DocumentElement.NamespaceURI); // search node with desired feature we're looking for and set newValue for it string xpath = string.Format("//psf:Feature[@name='{0}']/psf:Option", featureName); XmlNode node = xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode(xpath, manager); if (node != null) { if (newValue.StartsWith("ns0000")) { // add namespace to xml doc XmlAttribute namespaceAttribute = xmlDoc.CreateAttribute("xmlns:ns0000"); namespaceAttribute.Value = nsNameSpaceURI; xmlDoc.DocumentElement.Attributes.Append(namespaceAttribute); } node.Attributes["name"].Value = newValue; } // create a new PrintTicket out of the XML MemoryStream printTicketStream = new MemoryStream(); xmlDoc.Save(printTicketStream); printTicketStream.Position = 0; PrintTicket modifiedPrintTicket = new PrintTicket(printTicketStream); // for testing purpose save the printticket to file //FileStream stream = new FileStream("modPrintticket.xml", FileMode.CreateNew, FileAccess.ReadWrite); //modifiedPrintTicket.GetXmlStream().WriteTo(stream); return modifiedPrintTicket; } } // example of calling above code string nameSpaceURI = string.Empty; string selectedBin = XpsPrinterUtils.GetInputBinName(PrinterName, PaperBin, out nameSpaceURI); PrintTicket myPrintTicket = XpsPrinterUtils.ModifyPrintTicket(defaultPrintTicket, "psk:JobInputBin", selectedBin, nameSpaceURI);