
Ask HN: API for Printers? - dhruvkar
 I&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;d like to automate this process, so our non-technical warehouse staff doesn&#x27;t have to mess around in our archaic ERP system just to get to the print documents.<p>Is there an API for printers (specifically Brother or Canon)? Or another way to trigger print jobs?
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mtmail
Printers with IP address (wifi card, network port, network card) these days
support the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol)

~~~
dhruvkar
Would that allow me to bypass the print dialog on a browser?

I just want the user the hit print and it prints with preset settings. I'm
assuming an API is what I'm looking for. I can't find any recent python libs
that implement this protocol.

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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).

~~~
dhruvkar
For an Ubuntu server. My specific use case is turning out to be:

1\. User hits button 2\. two printers (with different kinds of paper), print
out two documents.

I want to hit an API to send the two documents to the printers.

