Printing Simultaneously on two network printers

[watsmyname]

Hello,

 

Greetings!

 

I have php application for restaurant, basically there are two types of orders Kitchen Items and Bar items. A cashier enters a order from customers from computer A (say). We have two computers in kitchen, Computer B and in Bar, Computer C.  When cashier from computer A clicks a button, depending upon the order type i need to print a chit on Computer B and/or Computer C. COmputer A, B, C are in same network.  All computers have laser printer which can print any type of content.

 

Well i tried to search the forum, i couldn't find anything that would be of my help. Can anyone tell me what would be the starting point for this??

 

Thanks

watsmyname

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Php itself has very limited direct ability to print (Under Windows there is a 'print' extension, though it is currently not available.)

 

You would probably need to use shell_exec() to either send commands to your operating system's 'print' command or to an application that accepts command line arguments to print a supplied document.

[watsmyname]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't know how to use shell_exec command to get job done. I tried to google  but didnt get any useful results. Moreover,  all computers have windows environment and PHP pages are located locally (i.e. for example http://192.168.0.23/restaurant/index.php=> Computer A).

[PFMaBiSmAd]

The following example creates a .pdf document and prints it -

<?php
require('./fpdf.php'); // the fpdf library (w/font folder)

$pdf=new FPDF();
$pdf->AddPage();
$pdf->SetFont('Arial','B',16);
$pdf->Cell(40,10,'Hello World!');
$pdf->Output('c:\test.pdf');

// both of the following strings work
$cmd = '"C:/Program Files/Adobe/Reader 9.0/Reader/AcroRd32.exe" /t c:/test.pdf'; // the double-quotes around the command portion are required
$cmd = "\"C:/Program Files/Adobe/Reader 9.0/Reader/AcroRd32.exe\" /t c:/test.pdf"; // the double-quotes around the command portion are required
shell_exec($cmd);
?>