Technical Memo: Printing from Web-Based Applications





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PRINTING FROM WEB-BASED APPLICATIONS

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Abstract

Another title for this Technical Memo could be "Can I Change my Printer Properties with JavaScript?", and the answer is: using the ScriptServer® PAN Printing System, yes you can!

JavaScript

Web-based applications typically rely on JavaScript to offload at least some functionality from the server to the client. So, you have a client, and one of the things it needs to do is print.. and you want to change the queue that the job prints on, or select stock in a different paper tray, or print on a particular electronic form, or duplexed, or multiple copies, etc.

This is exactly what the PAN web interface does when you submit a print job!

The PAN web interface is no exception: it is a web-based application (in its own right), and it relies heavily on JavaScript to define and communicate the characteristics associated with a job to be printed; if we can do it, you can, too!

Note that we're not submitting our jobs through the client OS printing system, but directly to our printing system via a CGI interface.

Modes of Submission

If you want to integratethe ScriptServer PAN Printing System with your web-based application, you'll want to discuss it with us in greater detail than we can go into in this technical memo ("Does that cost me money?" you rightly ask, and the answer is "it depends". Generally if you're already a ScriptServer PAN licensee and you pay for support, asking questions is covered under support. If we have to write code or support your JavaScript that's consulting and we address that on a case-by-case basis.). But broadly speaking, when you're architecting this thing, there are some high-level considerations and that's what we want to lay out here for you to think about before you call.

There are many different ways to get a print job into a PAN:

through the Windows Print.. command This is what first occurs to a lot of people: script the web browser and submit jobs through the Windows printing system, and while we provide a universal Windows printer driver for PAN (at no cost), we don't recommend this approach to print job submission for web-based applications (for starters, it's not cross-platform).
through our web interface Save the print job to your (client's local) hard drive, then have the user submit it through the web interface; script an invocation of our web interface from your application, and pass along the file name.
through our CGIs Use a multipart POST to submit your data, which could be in a file or could be assembled for submission by the client.
write your own CGIs in Perl, PHP or whatever you're comfortable with to do any necesary preprocessing, or even call your application to generate the datafile (instead of uploading it from the client), and then use LPD or panpr to submit the job to the PAN. Doing it this way gives you the greatest latitude to manage the properties you put at your user's fingertips.
have your server submit the jobs with LPD or panpr If the server side of your application contains all of the data to generate a print job, why ship it down to the client and then back up to the PAN? Have the application submit it directly to the PAN. Here you have to alter your application so that it can obtain the appropriate properties from the user in order to pass them along with the print job. ("LPD" is used here in the generic sense to refer to not only LPD the protocol, but also to lpr, lp, and whatever host-based print job submission mechanisms or APIs exist on your server platform.)