topic Re: Perl Network Printing Script in Operating System - Linux

Perl Network Printing Script

Junior C. — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:43:16 GMT

I need some help in writing a perl script to print to a network printer from windowsXP.

Searching Google I found info indicating that I have to open a socket to the destination IP address and port and dump the data which will
transparently be sent to the printer. What module do I used to open the socket?

use strict;
my $port='xxxx';
my $default_printer='xx.xx.xx.xx';

open(OUTPUT_PRINTER,"> \\\\$default_printer\\$port") || die "Unable to
open printer: $!\n"; print OUTPUT_PRINTER "This is a test Line\n";

Appreciate all help.

JC

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Court Campbell — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:50:51 GMT

try Net::LPR

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Court Campbell — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:51:45 GMT

I guess a link may help:

http://search.cpan.org/~dmlloyd/Net-LPR-1.007/LPR.pod

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Court Campbell — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:01:26 GMT

Net::printer also looks promising.

http://search.cpan.org/~cfuhrman/Net-Printer-1.04/lib/Net/Printer.pm

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Rob Leadbeater — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:42:33 GMT

Hi,

Network printers use a variety of port numbers.

Common ones are 9100 for JetDirects, and 515 for LPD based printers.

What printer are you using specifically ?

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Alexander Chuzhoy — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:04:53 GMT

The following will work:
use IO::Socket;
my $remote_host = 'x.x.x.x';
my $remote_port = 'x';
my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr => $remote_host,PeerPort => $remote_port,Proto => 'tcp',Type => SOCK_STREAM) || die "Couldn't connect to $remote_host\:$remote_port : $!\n";
print $socket "This is a test line - hello world\n";

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Junior C. — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 07:11:15 GMT

Rob,

What printer are you using specifically ?
515 for LPD based printers.

I want to print doc to printer MYPRINTER port 515.

Appreciate your help

JC.

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Court Campbell — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 07:50:30 GMT

There are also printers that support both jetdirect and lpd.

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Court Campbell — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:25:11 GMT

Are you wanting suggestions or are you wanting some one to write the script for you?

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Junior C. — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:47:16 GMT

Court,

>> Are you wanting suggestions or are you >>wanting some one to write the script for you?

I do not someone to write the script for me. That will defeat the whole purpose of me learning(well trying)to learn perl.

Suggestion, example, will be appreciated.

JC.

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Junior C. — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:55:45 GMT

All,

I did make some progress, well I can print doc to my network printer.

Following are my script.

I'm not sure how to print heading.

use strict;
use vars '@ARGV';
use Net::LPR;
use IO::File;

#if (scalar(@ARGV) < 2){die "\\nUsage: $0 \n";};

my $var0 = "myfile.txt";
my $var1 = 'printer';

my $lp = new Net::LPR(
StrictRFCPorts => 0,
RemoteServer => $var1,
RemotePort => 515,
PrintErrors => 0,
RaiseErrors => 0,
) || die "Can't create print context\n";

my $fh = new IO::File $var0, O_RDONLY or die "Can't open $var0: $!\n";
#my $fh = new IO::File $ARGV[0], O_RDONLY or die "Can't $ARGV[0] $!\n";

my $size = ($fh->stat())[7];

$lp->connect() || die "Can't connect to printer $var1: ".$lp->error."\n";

my $jobkey = $lp->new_job() || die "Can't create new job: ".$lp->error."\n";

$lp->send_jobs('lp') || die "Can't send jobs: ".$lp->error."\n";

# Can easily print postscript by changing method to job_mode_postscript
$lp->job_mode_text($jobkey) || die "Can't set job mode to text: ".$lp->error."\n";

$lp->job_send_control_file($jobkey) || die "Can't send control file: ".$lp->error."\n";

$lp->job_send_data($jobkey, '', $size);

while (my $line = $fh->getline())
{
$lp->job_send_data($jobkey, $line);
}

$lp->disconnect();

__END__

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Ralph Grothe — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:59:34 GMT

As Alexander already has shown you
the generic (OO interface) for Internet sockets in Perl would be IO::Socket::INET
(if you are more used to the procedural BSD Socket API you could also use the Perl Socket module, but this requires more function calls and awkward address translations).
However, this leaves the burden of compliance to the application's protocol to you.
So, fine that you found a more specialized module like Net::LPR.
I have to admit that I have never used it,
but I guess you found your way by its POD.
Maybe just a few "hints"?
There is no need to "use vars" on @ARGV
as this is implicitly a package global.
Besides, "use vars" is obsolete, and globals should be declared by "our" instead.
Also there is no need to scalar @ARGV if Perl can find out the ("Do What I Mean") context by itself.
So "if (@ARGV < 2)" should suffice.
But it never hurts to be explicit.
As you aren't using much functionality of IO::File (or those inherited from IO::Handle)
it seems a bit wasteful.
For instance to get the size of a file this would suffice: "my $size = -s $fh" (see perldoc -f -s).
So you don't even need to call stat().
Instead of instatiating an IO::File object
you could use a simple open() of the file whose content is to be printed.
If you passed that (or more) file(s) as arguments along with your Perl script invocation some further magic happens,
in that the file is implicitly opened and its name temporarily stored in $ARGV.
Then by assigning the buffer variable in the read loop to "<>" you can even omit the getline() call.

Re: Perl Network Printing Script

Junior C. — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 06:48:45 GMT

Ralph,

I appreciate your feedback/pointers.

Thread Close.

JC.