Printing using IPP without drivers (IPP Client)

Question

I have a device/appliance that you cannot install drivers for. I would like to add the ability to support network/IPP/AirPrint printers by having the user add the IP Addresses.

Since I am not printing through windows (which would use the IPP), how do I use IPP myself? Is there a c# client (or any windows library) out there that allows you to interact with IPP printers with the IPP protocol?

IPP Nerd · Accepted Answer

There are a few IPP client implementations and IPP libraries available for different programming languages (java/php/python/c#). A practical solution could be to use the ipptool available at https://openprinting.github.io/cups/. Create an ipp-command-file called printjob.ipp:

{
 OPERATION Print-Job
 GROUP operation-attributes-tag
  ATTR charset attributes-charset utf-8
  ATTR language attributes-natural-language en
  ATTR uri printer-uri $uri
 FILE $filename
}

Now you should be able to print a PDF file using these options:

ipptool -tv -f mydoc.pdf ipp://192.168.2.207 printjob.ipp

Make sure the printer (or print server) supports the document format you send. I assume you're familiar with how to execute an external command in your application.

Even though the ipptool is provided by CUPS it works perfect with any IPP printer. Check RFC 3510 or your printers documentation for the appropriate printer-uri-scheme or use ippfind.

Experienced developers should be able to implement the print job operation in their preferred programming language and ecosystem. I have implemented the use case from above in kotlin with 100 lines of code: https://github.com/gmuth/ipp-printjob-kotlin. A Java Version is also available at https://github.com/gmuth/ipp-printjob-java

Update 2025:

This is a minimal implementation in C# returning the IPP response status code.

public static int PrintJob(Uri uri, FileInfo file)
{
    WebRequest webRequest = WebRequest.Create(uri);
    webRequest.Method = "POST";
    webRequest.ContentType = "application/ipp";
    var binaryWriter = new BinaryWriter(webRequest.GetRequestStream());
    binaryWriter.Write(new byte[] { 1, 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1 });
    WriteAttribute(0x47, "attributes-charset", "us-ascii");
    WriteAttribute(0x48, "attributes-natural-language", "en");
    WriteAttribute(0x45, "printer-uri", uri.ToString());
    binaryWriter.Write((byte)3);
    file.OpenRead().CopyTo(binaryWriter.BaseStream);
    var binaryReader = new BinaryReader(webRequest.GetResponse().GetResponseStream());
    binaryReader.ReadInt16();
    return binaryReader.ReadByte() << 8 | binaryReader.ReadByte();
    void WriteAttribute(byte tag, string name, string value)
    {
        binaryWriter.Write(new byte[] { tag, 0, (byte)name.Length });
        binaryWriter.Write(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(name));
        binaryWriter.Write(new byte[] { 0, (byte)value.Length });
        binaryWriter.Write(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(value));
    }
}

Printing using IPP without drivers (IPP Client)

Answers (2)

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