Question

Direct printing to google cloud print

0

Hi all, we are still pretty new to Mendix and trying to determine if its suitable for oure business application. One thin it currently needs is background printing. Right now in our windows desktop application, this is not a problem. But since Mendix runs in the cloud, i cant directly talk to a local network printer without user interaction. Our printers support Google Cloud Print. And i was wondering if, for example, the following is possible : run a scheduled background task that generates a document and sends this to google cloud print directly without user interaction.

asked 2016-08-08

Martin van Es

5 answers

Ronald Catersels · Answer 1 · 2016-08-08

Somebody did already do a large part of the job. See the github page here: https://github.com/jittagornp/GoogleCloudPrint You will need Java skills though to create the custom Java actions. You could try to make an Mendix app from it so that others could also use this.

Regards,

Ronald

Dennis Kho · Answer 2 · 2016-08-09

Wouldn't you be able to use the Google Cloud Print API? Looks to me as if it has everything you need to handle the actual printing part, and can be integrated using REST. Stuff like duplexing (double sided printing) also seems possible.

Martin van Es · Answer 3 · 2016-08-09

Thanks for pointing this out, but it seems that this is going to be a complex solution. I think we will try a different approach and generate a pdf document and try to send that to the printer thru printer api or email. the only challenge in this is setting the printer settings (single/double sided, color/b&w, etc..)

Martin van Es · Answer 4 · 2016-08-14

Hi Dennis, I'm new to google cloud print, and did not find the REST api documentation yet, so thanks for pointing that out.

This seems like a perfect solution in combination with Mendix. If i understand correctly, we could just generate a PDF document and send it to the printer using the GCP REST API.

I'm going to try this.

Martin

Jonathan Foucheaux · Answer 5 · 2016-08-15

We have been using PrintNode from several of our Mendix applications with great success https://www.printnode.com/. You have to install the software on a computer that can print to the printer directly (over the network or USB, etc) but you can send printjobs to the printer from the cloud via that piece of software.