My goal is to automatically print shipping labels for an e-commerce website based on periodically created .csv-files.
I have the .csv-files ready. I also have the shipping label template ready in P-Touch Editor. This application allows to connect to a 'database' (in the form of a .csv-file in this case) and populate fields.
At this point I need to automate the process of opening the label template in P-Touch Editor and connect to the latest .csv-file, then print all the labels. Since I am running OS X, Applescript seemed like the obvious choice initially, but P-Touch Editor appears not to support it. I am stuck and looking for a way to communicate with either P-Touch Editor or create labels automatically in a different application and print from there.
As an alternative, I am considering exporting an html page from my e-commerce website and setup proper page dimensions and page-breaks, then print this.
Does anyone have a similar situation to mine or know a solution? In the end the goal is to never have to manually print labels and simply pick up the stack twice a day and start packing.
Best Answer
You can generate a label template and upload it to the printer. In the template you can define IDs for each field (text, bar code, etc). Next you can print directly by the network and send for each ID the right data from your website. The printer then fills the data into the template and prints it out. If have done so on my iPad to automate printing labels from a custom app. For network printing I used the QL-720NW via WLAN. The printing is then done with RAW on port 9100 to push the data. The printing commands are explained in the ESC/P command reference handbook.