Printing to thermal/pos printer frm php

[Daniel Bamigbayan]

Hi all,
I need to print from one of my php apps to a thermal printer. Has anyone done this before. Just need some quick hints that'll guide my research on this subject cos it has to be implemented asap.

Thanks in advance


Regards,
Daniel Bamigbayan

[Femi TAIWO]

Hi Daniel,

Quick questions:

More info would be useful - 

1. Is the printer connected to the Webserver(Apache) machine or just to the system with the web browser?

2. Windows or Linux Server?

 

Regards,

Femi TAIWO

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[Daniel Bamigbayan]

Hi Femi,

U'r amazing. Thanks for d prompt response. The printer will be connected to a windows based system. I Don't know about connecting it to apache. Like I said, I'v nt tried this before, but I'm convincd its no biggie.

Thanks

Regards,
Daniel Bamigbayan

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From: Femi TAIWO <dft...@gmail.com>

Sender: lagos...@googlegroups.com

Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 10:50:09 +0100

To: <lagos...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: lagos...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: {Lagos GTUG} Printing to thermal/pos printer frm php

[Femi TAIWO]

Hi Daniel,

Possible options

1. Send raw data to the printer from PHP - use file_put_contents or fopen to send to send data to the printer directly. This would work on a printer shared on the network as well. I recommend this option actually - 

fopen is a really powerful tool. It can do wonders. 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10268479/php-printing-to-local-thermal-printer-does-not-work-without-networkname

2. If the machine running your application is a windows machine and is connected to the printer, you should look at using  ActiveX Controls with PHP.

3.

.

.

.

n

 

Possible Hack: 

If the printer is normally accessible from notepad or wordpad or other applications on the machine, then you could call create a text file and do something like 

<?php shell_exec("notepad /P C:\receipt.txt"); ?> 

which would send the document to the default printer for printing.

Regards,

Femi TAIWO

[Jason Jolaoso]

:-)

Working on something similar as we speak but am tweaking a usb POS/Thermal printer

Try javascripts window.print() if you like the easy way out

but if you are like me who thrives on sweat and hardwork visit:


http://www.ehow.com/how_10073205_use-php-thermal-printer.html
http://php.net/manual/en/ref.printer.php

Best of luck man.

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Daniel Bamigbayan <prude...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Daniel Bamigbayan]

@femi - just got u right. D printer will be connected directly to d server. But what differentiates d two options in case there is d need to do that in df future

@Jason,

Thank. Simply means it's no different frm printing to a regular printer cos I already use d javascript option. I'll chk out d other links. Thanks.

One more question, does d receipt automatically resize to d size of d pos receipt or a different css has to be written to handle that.

Thanks gtug.I think I'm almost done wit my coding just on d way back frm client meeting

Regards,
Daniel Bamigbayan

---

From: Jason Jolaoso <ja...@siltech.com.ng>

Sender: jayob...@gmail.com

Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 11:08:49 +0100

To: <lagos...@googlegroups.com>

Cc: <prude...@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: {Lagos GTUG} Printing to thermal/pos printer frm php

[Femi TAIWO]

@Jason - You're the man!
Regards,

Femi TAIWO

[Tope Faro]

Nice work guys. #TeamHelpOneAnother (Y)

[Abiodun Thorpe]

Yikes!! I like this.

Website: www.abiodunthorpe.com.ng
Twitter: @tpcast
Blog: www.tech360ng.com

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[Jason Jolaoso]

Nice work guys

@Daniel you might need to play around with your css and formatting

Also From my experience once you install the printer/( printer driver if need be) windows selects the best fit for the thermal printer setting.

Use windows print page test to confirm this.

Got to run will talk more later.

[Folalola]

[Abisagbo Segun]

I had this challenge once and femi has given a bery good answer.

A key thing you need to do is convert to PDF/PostScript... Languages
the printer understands naturally.

Also specify measurements via CSS, the use DOM2PDF to convert ur HTML to PDF.

Download ghostprint and ghostview

install both...
Then use <?php exec('path-to-gs.exe filename.pdf')?>

[Abisagbo Segun]

DOM2PDF, ghostprint etc are all free to download...

Just google...