Is this possible?

coderphp

I want to do something really cool with my site, but I don't know which technologies i should be using or if its even possible. Basically, what I want to do is allow for remote printing. How would I be able to use php or something else to do this. People would come to my site, place an order, and automatically, it would print out of my printer, something of that sort. Any help would really be appreciated, I don't know if php is the solution, or some combination of java, or perl, but if anyone has seen this done before let me know. Thanks.

Azala

Just display all the order data on your page and put this code at the end;

//javascript
<script>window.print();</script>

Edit:: That won't get you through the print dialog of course, which is controlled by the OS.

Weedpacket

No, I think coderphp means coderphp's printer. On Windows at least there is the PECL [man]printer[/man] extension.

coderphp

Yeah, you are right, I am talking about the physical printer, so that things would print out without me having to do anything on my computer. Almost making my computer a print server for anything coming through my website.

coderphp

The php server I have is remote, and running UNIX, is there any way i can do this where my computer is separate from the server? Basically, I have a webhost, and i want things to print out on my home computer.

coderphp

Damn, this stuff is good, thanks for the help, I have it working on my computer (running windows xp, apache, and php), but still any help getting it working from a remote server would be great.

justsomeone

I'm assuming that your website is hosted remotely on a webfarm someplace, whereas your printer is stored locally.

Possibly the best answer is NOT to send anything directly to your printer, but rather to send them someplace where they are (automatically) printed from. This will protect you from issues such as a printer problem causing you to lose an order.

I would suggest that you need a program running on your PC or local server which will wake up every few minutes, look for any new orders, and print any that it finds.

There are a number of ways of achieving this:

Your site could store the orders in a database (which it should anyway) and your local program could then query that database for new orders, format the info into a printout and send it to the printer.
your site could store the orders, ready for printing, in textfiles in a directory and your local program could then search that database for new orders, and send them to the printer.
your site could email the orders to a special address, and your local program could log into that mailbox, download the order info, format it and send it to the printer.

How do those ideas sound?

coderphp

Good Ideas, I will have to try some of them. Thanks!