Convert StackLayout as Image in Xamarin - xamarin.android

Question

I'm working on Xmarin Forms(PCL) project, I want to convert the StackLayout to Image / buffer and send it to printer for hard print.
Can anyone suggest how to do it in (Xamarin.Android & Xamarin.iOS).

Answer 1

You can't. Xamarin does not have that kind of feature. You should write a Renderer for your UIComponent.
Fortunately there is an Objective-C iOS implementation, and an Android one as well. You can inspire from them.

Answer 2

Taken from this link, which I have personally used, quite a while back though, the following code will take a screenshot of the entire page.
I ended up modifying the code to only take a screenshot of a specific view on the page and also changed a few other things but this example is what I based it off of, so let me know if you would rather see that code and/or if something below is not working for you.
First you create an interface in your Forms project, IScreenshotManager.cs for example:
public interface IScreenshotManager {
Task<byte[]> CaptureAsync();
}
Now we need to implement our interface in Android, ScreenshotManager.cs for example:
public class ScreenshotManager : IScreenshotManager {
public static Activity Activity { get; set; }
public async System.Threading.Tasks.Task<byte[]> CaptureAsync() {
if(Activity == null) {
throw new Exception("You have to set ScreenshotManager.Activity in your Android project");
}
var view = Activity.Window.DecorView;
view.DrawingCacheEnabled = true;
Bitmap bitmap = view.GetDrawingCache(true);
byte[] bitmapData;
using (var stream = new MemoryStream()) {
bitmap.Compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.Png, 0, stream);
bitmapData = stream.ToArray();
}
return bitmapData;
}
}
Then set ScreenshotManager.Activity in MainActivity:
public class MainActivity : Xamarin.Forms.Platform.Android.FormsApplicationActivity {
protected override async void OnCreate(Android.OS.Bundle bundle) {
...
ScreenshotManager.Activity = this; //There are better ways to do this but this is what the example from the link suggests
...
}
}
Finally we implement this on iOS, ScreenshotManager.cs:
public class ScreenshotManager : IScreenshotManager {
public async System.Threading.Tasks.Task<byte[]> CaptureAsync() {
var view = UIApplication.SharedApplication.KeyWindow.RootViewController.View;
UIGraphics.BeginImageContext(view.Frame.Size);
view.DrawViewHierarchy(view.Frame, true);
var image = UIGraphics.GetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphics.EndImageContext();
using(var imageData = image.AsPNG()) {
var bytes = new byte[imageData.Length];
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.Copy(imageData.Bytes, bytes, 0, Convert.ToInt32(imageData.Length));
return bytes;
}
}
}