Android: How to let my users print data from the app.

Question

I have some data in my app that consists of text and image. I want to allow my users to be able to print that data.

Here are the options that I am thinking of:

1) Convert data into HTMl format and allow users to email and they can print from their desktop. This will be zip file with html and images. Pros: can be easily coded. Cons: not sure if users will know what to do with zip file.

2) Convert to PDF. But I have read on forums that iText won't work on Android. So any other options to convert to PDF? Pros: PDF can be easily printed. Cons: have to figure out a way to convert to PDF.

Anybody has tried allowing their users to print data? What are the options

Answer 1

There is an Android app called PrinterShare that allows you to print from the phone, but I think that just prints whole documents.

To do this yourself you would want to have some sort of server on your desktop machine which uses the Java Printing API to send your document to a configured printer. I am just brainstorming here... there are a lot of details to fill in. :-)

Good luck and I hope this helps a little.