Print to external receipt printer using PHP

Question

I'm trying to find a solution for sending live orders to a receipt printer.

Basically in pseudo-code:

if ($order == 'success')
{
    $printer = ip.to.remove.printer;

    $receipt_text = 'You just received an order!';

    $ch = curl_init('http://addresstosomekindofapi.com/print_receipt/');
    curl_setopt($ch, SOME_OPTION, 0).............;

    curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
}

I'm just exploring options in getting this done. It would be awesome to be able to do this rather than send faxes which often have tied up lines, etc, etc.

How could one achieve this?

Have you tried jZebra? Good: talks directly to printers attached to client workstations. Bad: requires java. Check it out: http://code.google.com/p/jzebra — Fatbuttlarry, Feb 28 '12 at 03:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 27 '11 at 20:39

1

To me, a solid solution is to build a desktop application that is connected to your web application and has the ability to send jobs to the printer. I don't think a web application can have much of control as to handle user's print jobs.

answered Jan 27 '11 at 20:39

Saad

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what kind of desktop libraries can helps, I found Jasper but it is complicated and very big – Eymen Elkum Sep 28 '15 at 09:11

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 24 '12 at 08:36

0

I think that the best solution to your problem is printing the document to pdf using a php class for printing to pdf. There are quite a few of such classes. A good one is ezpdf class which can be downloaded from http://www.ros.co.nz/pdf or http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/pdf-php

edited Dec 24 '12 at 08:36

Shai

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answered Dec 24 '12 at 08:05

Ezekiel

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 20:32

There are printers (like your basic office hp laserjets I guess) that can

Be reached trough ftp
Have 'virtual printer' modes for paper selection.

I'd look into that if I were you.

(this was assuming there is some sort of network separation between the printer and the php file.)

Print to external receipt printer using PHP

3 Answers3