PHP to Printer

[nextgengames]

Hey All,

Im trying to figure out a solution for my business. Basically I want to know how I would go about pushing orders to a printer automatically.

We have an all mac setup, and provisioning a linux box shortly.

Basic workflow would be:

Customer Orders -> Entered into DB -> PHP Script pushes to Printer

Any help would be appreciated.

[etully]

We do this all the time with a program called CUPS. Your sysadmin will know all about it. It's software that addresses a networked printer.

From PHP, we construct an invoice (usually as a PDF) and then execute a system command to make CUPS print that file to printer X. You configure CUPS with a list of all your printers and then any software on your web server can print files to any of those printers. It even works as a spooler to make sure that it's delivering the files to the printer only when the printer is ready. The software can even know when the printer is turned off or out of paper so that your PHP script can know that it has to try printing again later. (Heh, your PHP script could even send you an email telling you to add paper to your printer!)

[nextgengames]

Well unlucky for me, im programmer, sysadmin, dba and everything all rolled into one. Ill go and have a look at CUPS, the laserjet is currently attached to an iMac so hopefully can just get it the local server to post the pdf to it 🙂