Remote printing via a website

[drakkn]

I have no idea where to start.
I have a website which sells products via a shopping cart - when someone places an order I want to have the order automatically printed in the despatch area.

[pritaeas]

If the webserver is in your intranet it would be possible to generate a file on the despatch print server, where you could poll for new files and print them.

However, if your webserver is hosted this is not possible. You would need to create a webservice or email them, and write a program to handle this.

[kireol]

what's your access into the dispatch area? This would really define a best way to accomplish this.

If you have database access from the submission side to the dispatch side, do an insert and run a cron job on dispatch side to see if something needs to be printed.

if only http port is open to the dispatch area, i'd make a queue on some section of a website on the generation side. And on the dispatch side, use cURL to get the info and print them.

If you have access to setting up a network in a secure fashion, you could use a VPN and print directly to the printer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network

some routers and some printers allow you to print over the internet

Paying for logmein Pro (logmein.com) allows you to remotely print but I THINK it requires Windows.