Send ASCII String to IP Address

[edthedestroyer]

I am working on an card encoder which only requires a string of ascii to be sent to it's IP address in order to print.

Example

<

Name

#10000

"%10000?

>

So far I've been doing this be writing it to a text file, notepad.exe /p text.txt, then delete text.txt

This prints to the default printer which is a generic/text printer with the IP address of the encoder.

Is there a way to send this string directly to the IP Address, or at least a cleaner way to send it to the generic/text printer?

Resolved: Used TCPConnect and TCPSend to send the print command string to a DataCard printer. Printer is in OpenCard format.

Edited May 5, 2012 by edthedestroyer

[MilesAhead]

Not sure about the IP part. But WinAPIEx UDF has _WinAPI_GetDefaultPrinter() function. Might help get you part of the way. It returns the name of the default printer for the current user.

Edited May 4, 2012 by MilesAhead

[ProgAndy]

How can you access your card encoder? Only as a printer, or is there a way to simply use TCPOpen & TCPSend?

[edthedestroyer]

I am using a genertic/text printer driver that sends the print job as text because that's the only way I know how to send acsii messages to an IP Address. The manual says it simply needs to IP stream with the acsii enclosed. Can you elaborate on TCPOpen & TCPSend?

Edit: Didn't know that was a built-in function. I will research these functions and see if they suit. I don't believe the encoder documentation specified a port, should I just pick a random port over 20000?

Edited May 4, 2012 by edthedestroyer

[hannes08]

The default port for printing is 9100.

You can find the actual port in the control panel ==> printers ==> (file ==> )Server Properties ==> Ports

And TCPSend is the right way to go.

Edited May 4, 2012 by hannes08

[ProgAndy]

Edit: Didn't know that was a built-in function. I will research these functions and see if they suit. I don't believe the encoder documentation specified a port, should I just pick a random port over 20000?

If there is no port specified, try a random port. If you want to associate some meaning, what about Port 9100 or 35 (Any private printer server protocol) Edited May 4, 2012 by ProgAndy

[edthedestroyer]

Great! I was able to use the TCPSend example in the documentation to get it working. I have a DataCard printer and it appears to want data on port 9100. This was a lot easier than I expected.