Print PDF from web without saving to filesystem first

Question

In Python3.4 I am using the following code to print a PDF from a website using the requests library:

with open(temp_pdf_file, 'wb') as handle:
   response = requests.get(html.unescape(message['body']), stream=True)
   for block in response.iter_content(1024):
       handle.write(block)
cmd = '/usr/bin/lpr -P {} {}'.format(self.printer_name,temp_pdf_file)
print(cmd)
proc = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()
exit_code = proc.wait()

Is there a way to skip the temporary file save and stream directly the printer directly?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 17 '16 at 12:29

You can have the subprocess read its input from stdin and write to the stdin "file" directly.

import requests
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

message = ...

cmd = '/usr/bin/lpr -P {}'.format(self.printer_name)
proc = Popen(cmd, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE, shell=True)
response = requests.get(html.unescape(message['body']), stream=True)
for block in response.iter_content(1024):
    proc.stdin.write(block)
stdout, stderr = proc.communicate()
exit_code = proc.wait()
print exit_code

Excellent, thank you. Too obvious now that I see it. – Hoffmania Mar 17 '16 at 17:33 — Hoffmania, Mar 17 '16 at 17:33

Print PDF from web without saving to filesystem first

1 Answers1