Sample printing code below is very, very basic with nothing fancy and nothing based on reporting components. Delphi's simplest technique to produce a printout: assigning a file to the printer with the AssignPrn RTL procedure.

The sample has a unidirectional SQLDataSet component,hooked to an InterBase connection and based on the following SQL statements:

select d.Department, e.full_name, e.job_name, e.hire_date

from Employee e

inner join department d

on d.dept_no = e.dept_no

the printing routine requires three(3) parameters, see code below:

procedure TNavigator.PrintAllButtonClick (Sender: TObject);

var

        Font: TFont;

begin

     // set progressBar range

     EmplCountData.Open;

   try

     ProgressBar1.Max := EmplCountData.Fields[0].AsInteger;

   finally

        EmplCountData.Close;

   end;

   Font := TFont.Create;

   try

      Font.Name := 'Courier New';

      Font.size := 9;

      PrintOutDataSet(EmplData, ProgressBar1, Font);

   finally

        Font.Free;

   end;

end;

here is the code, which uses three(3) nested try / finally blocks to release all the resources properly:

procedure PrintOutDataSet (data: TDataSet; progress: TProgressBar; Font: TFont; maxSize: Integer = 30);

var

        PrintFile: TextFile;

        I: Integer;

        sizeStr: String;

        oldFont: TFontRecall;

begin

   // assign the printer to a file

   AssignPrn(PrintFile);

   Rewrite(PrintFile);

   // set the font and keep the original one

   oldFont := TFontRecall.create(Printer.Canvas.Font);

   try

        Printer.Canvas.Font := Font;

   try

        data.Open;

   try

   // print header (field names)

   // in bold

   Printer.canvas.Font.Style := [fsBold];

   for I := 0 to data.FieldCount -1 do

   begin

        sizeStr := IntToStr(min (data.Fields[i].DisplayWidth, maxSize));

        write(PrintFile, Format ('%-' + sizeStr + 's', [data.Fields[i].FieldName] ));

   end;

   writeln (PrintFile);

   // for each record of the dataset

   Print.Canvas.Font.Style := [];

   while not data.EOF do

   begin

      // print out each field of the record

     for I := 0 to dataFieldCount -1 do

     begin

        sizeStr := IntToStr( min (data.Fields[i].displaywidth,maxSize));

        write(PrintFile, format('%-' + sizeStr + 's', [data.Fields[i].AsString]));

     end;

     writeln(PrintFile);

     // advance progress bar

     progress.Position := progress.Position + 1;

     data.next;

   end;

   finally

        // close the dataset

        data.close;

   end;

   finally

        // reassign the original printer font

        oldFont.Free;

   end;

   finally

        // close the printer file

        System.CloseFile(PrintFile);

   end;

end;