Question

I am developing an application in .Net(csharp 4.0) which detects if zebra printer is installed and then send a barcode to printer in zpl if zpl is suppported otherwise in EPL. How can I check If zebra printer is installed or is available on network(shared printer) and if so, it supports zpl or epl. I thought to check Device Id. but it looks device id is just display name and is changed when I change the printer name from printers and devices.

thanx

Answer 1

You don’t want to check on model-name. Instead, you check which drivers are controlling printers. After all– A ZPL capable printer is going to be using a Zebra printer driver. And you can check the drivername property as demonstrated below. There are, of course, many more properties available about the printer in question.

using System;
using System.Management;

namespace Test
{
    class Program
    {
        public static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string query = string.Format("SELECT * from Win32_Printer");
            ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
            ManagementObjectCollection coll = searcher.Get();

            foreach (ManagementObject printer in coll)
            {
                //foreach (PropertyData property in printer.Properties)
                //{
                //    Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}: {1}", property.Name, property.Value));
                //}

                var property = printer.Properties["DriverName"];
                if (property.Value.ToString().ToLowerInvariant().Contains("zebra"))
                {
                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;
                    Console.Write("ZEBRA: ");
                }
                else 
                {
                    Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Gray;
                    Console.Write("Regular: ");
                }

                Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0}: {1}", property.Name, property.Value));
            }

            Console.Write("Press any key to continue . . . ");
            Console.ReadKey(true);
        }
    }
}