I need help trying to get thermal shipping label data from a Web site to a local Zebra printer. The data itself is just plain text but spooling it from a Web site seems to be very difficult for some reason. Does anyone have any experience with this? I am using ColdFusion 8 and Windows Server 2008.
Your print data could be sent with a MIME type (there probably is one for it, but you could make one up too)
On the client's PC, they could have that MIME type mapped to a program that simply prints whatever it receives.
Setting the MIME type on a PC can be done with code or a .REG file. If you control the user's environment, that's pretty simple. Making a program that dumps whatever it receives is also easy. That would be a nice task for Visual C or good, old VB6. Very little code. As long as the user has the .EXE and the .REG file, they'll print reliably, every time, without the browser's crap getting in the way. (think of this as what happens when you click a link to a PDF - Acrobat opens. Well, have the little printing EXE open for your file type - easy).
This is familiar to me... I think I did this with a proprietary font set... AH! Yes, I had to do this to generate mortgage documents that used proprietary fonts for drawing the pretty lines. I was able to take a proprietary, stand-alone mortgage origination server, share the folder where the mortgage .PRN files had been created. A Web server with access to that share enumerate the files in the share to a Web page, then, when users clicked on a file, the .PRN would stream to their PCs where a corresponding .EXE would see it as one of its own and send it to the correct output device (a designated printer at their location). That dumb little piece of code eliminated 126 document servers (and their maintenance and licensing costs) instantly and mortgage documents were never lost or sent to the wrong branch by mistake again. I think it took 3 hours to get it all working from inception to testing at the branches.
Yeah, same thing here. It'll work. Trust me. It'll work.
I was unclear by your question as if the Zebra printer is connected to the web server and what software the server is running. If you are trying to send the data to a printer connected to the web server, I used the following information to send label data to a Zebra thermal printer in an Intranet solution and it worked great:
How to send raw data to a printer by using Visual C# .NET
Perhaps you can adapt this solution to your environment.
I fiddled about with this problem for ages. In the end I had to create downloadable printfiles. The user downloads them and then copy (MSDOS) them to the printer.
There were two main issues:
generally speaking, you can't print
from a website unless you open the
file (ie the file becomes local)
the print drivers on the user's (Windows)
machine add non-printing characters
to the barcode file as it is sent to
the printer
We installed a batch file (which runs copy instead of print) on all client machines that need to print barcodes and we added a right-click menu item to run the batch on files named *.barcode.
I'll be watching this thread to see if anyone has found a more direct solution. But this was the only thing we could do given the parameters of our situation.
I don't know if I have fully understood your problem or the exact environment but I have answered a similar question here with an example for ASP.NET (C#). That solution is mainly for a known printer (specific IP and port). If you have several clients with their own label printers the solution could be used for that as well. But then you have to make a solution where the clients are able to set their own IP and port of their label printer. They also might need to make a port forward for the traffic in their firewall. The webpage then just prints to the specified IP and port. You can also use a domain name instead of IP.
Perhaps you could try this:
http://code.google.com/p/jzebra/
This project allows the ZPL commands to be sent to the printer via a web browser.
Related
Link to the bug report on 'Feedback Hub'
An audio endpoint device, from here on referred to as 'endpoint', is a physical or virtual audio output or input device.
With the Windows 10 April Update 1803 the long overdue 'App volume and device preferences' have been introduced. These settings allow more control over audio stream management as it is now possible to set different endpoints for different applications, no matter whether that particular application comes with an endpoint selection or not.
However, there is an issue where the audio of a program, whose endpoint is non-default, is streamed through the default endpoint (or not at all) after it has been closed and launched again, although the endpoint is displayed correctly in the settings:
As far as I know the issue can be recreated on a Windows 10 machine (version 1803 or higher) with any virtual or physical endpoint and an affected program. I used 'VLC Media Player' in this example (disregarding the fact that it comes with an endpoint selection) as it is well known and widely accessible, which should make it easier to recreate the issue.
What I'm searching for...
... is a programmatically solution to switch between endpoints, which ideally can be launched in form of a script to set the correct endpoint with an application launch.
For my purpose it would be enough to have to adjust the device instance path manually, as the device would be always the same, but I'm not going to complain about a solution which retrieves the device instance path from the registry, too.
Defined endpoints and the device instance path of the device they are using can be retrieved from the subkeys of the key HKEY_USERS\# YOUR SID #\Software\Microsoft\Multimedia\Audio\DefaultEndpoint. I don't know how windows generates the name of the subkeys or where they can be found. If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say these are Application IDs (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
The device instance path itself can be found in the Device Manager (under 'Audio inputs and outputs' double click the desired device, navigate to the tab 'Details' and select 'Device instance path' from the 'Property' drop-down menu).
Additionally the entry about Audio Endpoint Devices and Stream Management in the Microsoft Docs might be helpful, but that is way above my head.
A possible but impractical workaround...
... would be, to manually set another endpoint for the application and switch back to desired endpoint at every launch of said application (as shown above).
But not just takes this at least 10 seconds at each and every launch, you might even forget to do this as the audio might just get streamed through the default endpoint *¹.
The alternative to the latter is, that no audio will be streamed at all *² or in some cases it actually works *³.
*¹ e.g.: VLC Media Player, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (although the audio will be streamed correctly during the splash screens)
*² e.g.: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
*³ e.g.: Window Media Player, Microsoft Edge, Firefox
Observations
VLC Media Player comes with an endpoint selection, but so does TeamSpeak 3 and, unlike VLC, it skips the Windows settings completely.
Call of Duty not streaming any audio most likely is connected to the engine as I didn't encounter any other application doing something similar.
Windows Media Player, Microsoft Edge and Firefox are the only programs (I tested so far) which work fine. They have no endpoint selection (I'd know of) and will use the correct endpoint after closing and launching it again. It should be noted, however, that Firefox and Microsoft Edge will show multiple instances in the "App volume and device preferences" when adjusting the endpoint.
Disclaimer
I already tried two 3rd party softwares: 'Audio Router', which didn't work at all and 'CheVolume', which doesn't solve the issue and constantly crashes while doing so.
This question is based on one I asked over at Super User (here), where I didn't get an answer I was able to work with due to my lack of knowledge regarding actual programming (I'm only somewhat familiar with Batch and PowerShell). I'm well aware that neither Stack Overflow nor Super User are script writing services, however, the issue is not being fixed with the Windows 10 October Update 1809 and I see this as a problem which is affecting not just me and with that would be helpful for multiple people after me. Feel free to write a comment or propose an edit if you see this differently.
I'm also not sure whether the tags 'audio-streaming' and 'endpoint' should be used in this context, please propose an edit if they shouldn't or you can think of any better.
Edit - 05/11/18
Using the 3rd party software 'EarTrumpet' I was able to overcome the issue with the 'Call of Duty' games (no audio at all after restarting), however, 'VLC Media Player' would not restart after I assigned a non-default endpoint with 'EarTrumpet' until I closed 'EarTrumpet' again and the issue with 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege' remains the same.
Edit - 18/01/19
Added link to a bug report I created on the 'Feedback Hub' 2 month ago.
Edit - 20/01/19
After doing some testing again it should be noted that having 'EarTrumpet' run in the background will keep a non-default endpoint for 'VLC Media Player' across restarts, however, 'VLC Media Player' will only (reliably) restart when the non-default endpoint was set in the 'App volume and device preferences'.
I do not have any solution regarding a programming language to handle such events.
But I can recommend EarTrumpet app to handle this change more quickly https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/13/17457778/eartrumpet-windows-10-audio-app
(Windows store: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/eartrumpet/9nblggh516xp?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=nOD%2FrLJHOac&ranSiteID=nOD_rLJHOac-hUn6PgKuMKwQLdrzRqnPTA&epi=nOD_rLJHOac-hUn6PgKuMKwQLdrzRqnPTA&irgwc=1&OCID=AID681541_aff_7593_1243925&tduid=%28ir__qwqlg6jd0jba3y9hpnbvikaite2xk6kuyv9udtr100%29%287593%29%281243925%29%28nOD_rLJHOac-hUn6PgKuMKwQLdrzRqnPTA%29%28%29&irclickid=_qwqlg6jd0jba3y9hpnbvikaite2xk6kuyv9udtr100&activetab=pivot:overviewtab )
I will update the answer if I find a easy way to script/program a change of output on each app.
(I Use Ubuntu)
I'm looking for some pointers for writing a firewall program which denies every port/ip at first and creates rules by asking you whenever a program wants to access the internet, much like the discontinued product Kaspersky Anti Hacker for Windows. I especially want to use it on web browsing. So if my web browser wants to access stackoverflow.com the program should ask me if it should make a connection to stackoverflow.com's ip address, or when torrent client wants to connect a peer It should ask to either allow that port or allow that ip/port only.
I have used gufw but I have to know the port/ip before adding the rules so it isn't as I want it to be. I'm also trying to stay out of Firestarter since the last release was in 2005. So I have decided to write my own.
I just need some pointers on this subject. It can be a terminal command to see the connections I make with other computers, or a way to prompt before making connections, an open source project that sounds like this, or a c++ library/shell program that I can use to write a program for this... Any lead at all would suffice.
If you could point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.
PS. I am familiar with c++ and shell and php but that's irrelevant.
Hmm, you seem to be interested in Windows only. If so, you might wish to look at Windows Layered Socket Providers (LSP) infrastructure.
In short, you can write DLL, which would be automatically loaded into any application that uses Winsock. This DLL can intercept calls to any Winsock function like connect(), send() and etc. When such call is intercepted you can show user some window asking if he wish to connect to this address.
So, this can be used to build such firewall application you are thinking of.
There should be a lot of documentation on how to create LSP's on Microsoft site, but i remember especially nice example by Komodia company - http://www.komodia.com/lsp/lsp-sample.
I downloaded some flash games some time ago to play offline at school if I find myself with no work to do and have a spare. The only problem is that they always attempt to save/load from the application data, and I don't believe the files are created at all, let alone loaded next time I would play it again.
Instead of decompiling each one and finding/changing the save and load location I thought about the Windows API, hooks in particular. Perhaps it may be possible to monitor system requests to create such a file, or open it if it's trying to load, and then tell it to look elsewhere (i.e. my flash drive)?
I don't know if the idea is actually plausible or not, but any solutions, or a solid "It's impossible" would be great.
I hope some of these help:
WinAPIOverride32 is an advanced api monitoring software.
Deviare API
Deconstructing the Poker Client, Part 1
When I connect the iPod (or iPhone) to the Windows PC,
it look like an USB drive, but I can't open a file on it because I can't know the correct file path.
I was also unable to drop the file to my application because the drag source does not have CF_HDROP.
Some applications can open a file on iPod, but it was a copy on the local temp folder.
screenshot http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/5396/ipodx.png
My question is ..
How can I directly (programmatically) open and read the picture file on iPod?
If I double click on it (or right click and select Preview menu),
it launches Windows Photo Viewer -- it is not my default picture viewer.
Can I change the file (.PNG) association to other application?
What's the viewer application's requirement to be a default viewer for files on ipod?
Applications that do that use Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP). On Windows Microsoft implements many interfaces as part of Windows Image Acquisition (WIA). Read more here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms630344(v=VS.85).aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307859 or manually edit registry at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.png
Try the iPhoneBrowser program. It should give you a fair idea of the path.
From everything I've read I don't think Apple gives you access to the file system on the iPhone / iTouch / iPad; they want you to use iTunes to transfer files back and forth. I believe the Android and Windows Phone environments have similar restrictions. (If you "jailbreak" or "root" your device that's obviously a different story, which is why many such utilities explicitly state they only work on rooted devices.)
In part, this is a security precaution: if it were possible to directly access the file system on the mobile device it would be that much easier for someone to plant malware on your phone or PDA.
For this reason, updates to the various mobile OSes frequently include changes to (1) make jailbreaking more difficult and/or (2) close the loopholes that allow software like the iPhoneBrowser to work.
Some of the portable music players that use (Windows) Media Player have similar limitations. For example, I had a Sansa m100 (I think) where I could just drag files to the device and the playlist would automatically get updated; on at least some of the newer models (eg the c200) you have to use Media Player to download content. Which to me is annoying since there doesn't seem to be a way to use Media Player to delete content from the device.
There probably are APIs to do this sort of thing, but I would guess they're somewhat specific to the platform you're using -- ie I don't think you're going to be able to just use CreateFile() or something like that.
I would like to restrict people using my application to one Computer, so I was thinking about IP's.. but people in some countries get new IP's after they reboot their Internet.. so I need something better to identify the users, like some value that doesn't change until the user performs a format.
Thanks
The MAC address of e.g. an ethernet interface typically doesn't change even across formats (only if the user changes ethernet interface card). Don't worry, nothing to do with Apple Macs, MAC stands for Media Access Control;-).
You will probably need some registration process, so you could tell the user that you will connect to get some update, and in that process send the serial number of the application and the mac address. If the serial number has already been registered then return an error to the user.
Ideally you should perhaps download some needed dll that is tied to a specific serial number and perhaps mac address, so that if the user copies the dll to a different program it will require more work to get it to work.
It depends on how much you want to inconvenience the user as to the best approach, I believe.
Where I specified dll could be any assembly, jar file, etc, that the language in question uses for running the application.