@agsolutions-at/printers

🖨️ printers

printers is a high-performance, Rust-powered replacement for outdated native printer libraries in Node.js. Built on top of rust-printers, it provides seamless bindings via napi-rs, supporting fast and reliable printer interactions in Node.js and Electron applications.

✅ Prebuilt native binaries included — no need to build from source for most users.

✨ Features

• ⚡ Powered by Rust — high performance, memory-safe.
• 🔌 Native Node.js bindings via napi-rs.
• 🧩 Electron-friendly — includes prebuilt binaries, plug-and-play.
• 🖥️ Cross-platform aware — currently supports macOS and Windows.
• 💡 Easy-to-use API for interacting with system printers.
• 📄 Native PDF support on macOS — uses CUPS with native PDF handling on UNIX systems; see PDF Printing on Windows.
• 🧾 Label printer compatible — works with devices like Rollo and Zebra.

ℹ️ Want Linux support? PRs are welcome!

📦 Installation

Install using your preferred package manager:

# npm
npm install @agsolutions-at/printers

# yarn
yarn add @agsolutions-at/printers

# pnpm
pnpm add @agsolutions-at/printers

🧱 No native build step needed — prebuilt binaries are downloaded for your platform automatically.

🚀 Quick Start

Here's a basic example to get up and running:

import {getPrinters, print, getActiveJobs, getJobHistory} from '@agsolutions-at/printers';

const printers = getPrinters();
console.log('Available printers:', printers);

const buffer = new TextEncoder().encode('Hello, printers!');
const jobId = print(printers[0].name, buffer, 'My Test Job', []);
console.log('Printed with print job ID: ', jobId);

const jobs = getActiveJobs(printers[0].name);
console.log('Active jobs:', jobs);

🔍 All bindings mirror the native Rust API. Check index.d.ts for full typings and usage.

🧪 CLI Testing

This repo includes a command-line utility: printer-cli.mjs, which makes it easy to test the API from the terminal.

🏃 Run the CLI:

node printer-cli.mjs

💡 Features:

• List available printers
• Select and print text
• Print a file
• View active jobs
• View job history

Perfect for debugging or quick testing without writing your own app.

🛠 Building from Source

If you prefer to build locally:

• Clone the repository:

  git clone https://github.com/agsolutions-at/printers.git
  cd printers
  

• Install dependencies:

  yarn install
  

• Build the native module:

  yarn build
  

🛠 Prerequisites: Rust toolchain (rustc, cargo) and Node.js installed.

📄 PDF Printing on Windows

Unlike macOS (which supports native PDF printing via CUPS), Windows does not natively support raw PDF printing for most printers. This means sending a PDF buffer directly may result in garbage output — unless the printer explicitly supports PDF.

To reliably print PDFs on Windows, consider one of the following workarounds:

Use SumatraPDF (Silent PDF Printing)

One of the most reliable ways to print PDFs on Windows is to use SumatraPDF, a lightweight PDF viewer.

You can invoke it from Node.js using child_process:

import {execFile} from 'child_process';

const sumatraPath = 'C:\\path\\to\\SumatraPDF.exe'; // make sure to use the .exe matching your arch x64, ia32...
const printerName = 'Your Printer Name';
const filePath = 'C:\\path\\to\\your.pdf';

execFile(sumatraPath, ['-print-to', printerName, '-silent', filePath], (err) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error('Printing failed:', err);
  } else {
    console.log('Printed PDF successfully.');
  }
});

✅ SumatraPDF handles the rendering and sends the job to the printer via the default Windows printing pipeline. Use pdf-to-printer as a reference if you want to wrap SumatraPDF.

Alternative: Convert PDF to EMF or PS Before Printing

Another approach is to convert the PDF to a more universally printer-friendly format (like EMF or PostScript) before sending it to the printer:

• Use Ghostscript to convert PDF to .ps:

  gswin64c -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=ps2write -sOutputFile=output.ps input.pdf
  

• Then use Node.js to print the .ps file using the print() function from this package.

Using electron-builder to bundle the platform-specific native module

When building an Electron app, you may need native modules that are specifically compiled for your target operating system and architecture (like getting the right key to fit the right lock). The following script helps make sure the correct .node binaries are downloaded just before packaging the app using electron-builder.

// package.json
{
  ...
  "build": {
    "beforePack": "./beforePack.js",
    "files": [
      ...
      "!**/node_modules/@agsolutions-at/printers-*/**"
    ]
  },
  ...
}

Define a beforePack hook. Do not include optional dependencies of your build platform.

// beforePack.js
import path from 'node:path';
import https from 'node:https';
import fs from 'node:fs';
import printersPackage from './app/node_modules/@agsolutions-at/printers/package.json' with {type: 'json'};
import {fileURLToPath} from 'node:url';

const __filename = fileURLToPath(import.meta.url);
const __dirname = path.dirname(__filename);

const downloadFile = (url, dest, cb) => {
  https
  .get(url, res => {
    // If redirect
    if (res.statusCode >= 300 && res.statusCode < 400 && res.headers.location) {
      return downloadFile(res.headers.location, dest, cb); // follow redirect
    }

    const fileStream = fs.createWriteStream(dest);
    res.pipe(fileStream);

    fileStream.on('finish', () => {
      fileStream.close(cb); // call callback on finish
    });

    res.on('error', err => {
      fs.unlink(dest, () => {
      });
      cb(err.message);
    });
  })
  .on('error', err => {
    cb(err.message);
  });
};

const beforePack = context => {
  const {electronPlatformName, arch} = context;

  let archName;
  switch (arch) {
    case 0:
      archName = 'ia32';
      break;
    case 1:
      archName = 'x64';
      break;
    case 2:
      archName = 'armv7l';
      break;
    case 3:
      archName = 'arm64';
      break;
    case 4:
      archName = 'universal';
      break;
    default:
      throw Error('Unknown arch');
  }

  let downloadUrl;
  if (electronPlatformName === 'win32') {
    downloadUrl = `https://github.com/agsolutions-at/printers/releases/download/v${printersPackage.version}/printers.win32-${archName}-msvc.node`;
  } else {
    // changes this dependening on your needs, in this case we bundle an unversal module.
    downloadUrl = `https://github.com/agsolutions-at/printers/releases/download/v${printersPackage.version}/printers.darwin-universal.node`;
  }
  const nativeModulePath = path.join(
      __dirname,
      'app',
      'node_modules',
      '@agsolutions-at',
      'printers',
      electronPlatformName === 'win32' ? `printers.win32-${archName}-msvc.node` : `printers.darwin-universal.node`
  );
  downloadFile(downloadUrl, nativeModulePath, err => {
    if (err) {
      console.error('Download error:', err);
      process.exit(1);
    } else {
      console.log('Download printers completed');
    }
  });
};

export default beforePack;

beforePack.js: before your app gets packaged, it sneaks in and places the correct native modules on stage based on the OS and architecture you're targeting. It detects whether you're building for Windows or macOS, figures out the architecture (x64, arm64, etc.), downloads the correct version of native .node files from GitHub releases and saves them into the appropriate module folders.

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions of all kinds — bug reports, feature requests, docs, and PRs!

👉 Submit an issue or pull request on GitHub.

📄 License

MIT © agsolutions GmbH
See LICENSE for full details.