iOS iPad app for customize printer

[~Maddy~]

Hello Friends,

I am newbie for Ipad application development. I have one device which works as a Printer.

What I want to know is that is it possible to develop an application for Ipad which detects that device as a network printer and whenever user wants to print via that application data should be transferred to that printer.

Regards,
~Maddy~

 

[PhoneyDeveloper]

What do you mean by

"I have one device which works as a Printer."

Are you saying you have a printer on your network? Something else that looks like a printer?

Apple has APIs that allow apps to print to AirPrint certified printers. If your printer is Airprint certified then you can use those APIs and things will "just work."

If your printer is not AirPrint certified then it is still possible to print to some printers, but you'll need to do some research on how this is done and probably do some experimentation with your printer. You can use Bonjour to detect printers on your network.

Is this an appstore app?

 

[Jessica Lares]

Printopia already does this. As long as your Mac can do it, so can that app.

 

[~Maddy~]

What do you mean by Are you saying you have a printer on your network? Something else that looks like a printer?

Apple has APIs that allow apps to print to AirPrint certified printers. If your printer is Airprint certified then you can use those APIs and things will "just work."

If your printer is not AirPrint certified then it is still possible to print to some printers, but you'll need to do some research on how this is done and probably do some experimentation with your printer. You can use Bonjour to detect printers on your network.

Is this an appstore app?

Hi PhoneyDeveloper,

Thanks for reply. No this device is not a real printer but you can say its a electronic device which has capability to connect with WIFI.

And what I want basically is whenever this device is connected in LAN and iPad user want to print something (in this case user want to send some data to that device), User can use simple Print button and user should able to transfer data over wifi to that device.

My printer called device is not supporting Airprint or you can say I have no knowledge about what is AirPrint.

 

[PhoneyDeveloper]

Can you tell us what your device is, really?

Anyway, Bonjour is a common way that iOS devices find services on the network. Does your device advertise any services by Bonjour. Apple has a sample project called BonjourWeb that can easily be modifies to search for any kind of Bonjour service.

Communication depends on what your device supports. Printers communicate by a number of standard protocols. Web servers communicate by other standard protocols. And so on.

Printers support protocols like ftp, IPP, port 9100. They may support various kinds of data formats like PostScript, PJL, PCL, PDF, and others.

What is your device? What protocols does it support?

 

[~Maddy~]

Can you tell us what your device is, really?

Anyway, Bonjour is a common way that iOS devices find services on the network. Does your device advertise any services by Bonjour. Apple has a sample project called BonjourWeb that can easily be modifies to search for any kind of Bonjour service.

Communication depends on what your device supports. Printers communicate by a number of standard protocols. Web servers communicate by other standard protocols. And so on.

Printers support protocols like ftp, IPP, port 9100. They may support various kinds of data formats like PostScript, PJL, PCL, PDF, and others.

What is your device? What protocols does it support?

My device is custom hardware which can support TCP/IP Stack and there is one small display also. So I want to display some data which is going to be send via iPad.

I will study some more details about Bonjour.

 

[xStep]

A quick way to see what is advertising over your network is to use Bonjour Discovery on iOS. It is a port of a Mac app.