HACKER Q&A
📣 dhruvkar

API for Printers?


I'm trying to automate receiving shipping containers at our warehouse. Part of it requires printing ~3 documents so the warehouse team can inspect and label the products coming in.

I'd like to automate this process, so our non-technical warehouse staff doesn't have to mess around in our archaic ERP system just to get to the print documents.

Is there an API for printers (specifically Brother or Canon)? Or another way to trigger print jobs?

  👤 mtmail Accepted Answer ✓
Printers with IP address (wifi card, network port, network card) these days support the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol
👤 gus_massa
Which OS? Linux/Windows/OSX/Android? (The brand of the printer should not be important.)

Most programming languages have a library to create a PDF. Put it in a temporary secret location. And the OS have an API to print a file (if the proper program is installed).