Print from Stock Image Folder

It can be powerful to use a browser as a user interface to print stock photos in a point-of-sale situation.

Complete source code is below. In this example, a Python 3 script finds all the jpg and png files in its working folder, and launches a page of thumbnails in a browser. Clicking on any thumbnail will cause that file to be printed. This uses the xmlsubmission.dyn feature of the Automation Option, an extra cost add-on for Wasatch SoftRIP.

Running the script in a folder with eight jpg files launches a browser with a view like this:

This script has been kept very simple to serve as a document. A little editing can produce great improvements in esthetics, and a bit more work on this Python script could have it traverse a tree of folders, or work as part of a web-to-print solution.

To make this work smoothly, modify the response of xmlsubmission.dyn so that the browser doesn't get stuck in Processing.... This can be done by creating a file submissionAck.html in the folder httpService\interfaces\default, and filling it with the HTML/Javascript source code shown below.

This was written to run on a local file system. Because it relies on the browser do the thumbnailing (client side) it would be pretty inefficient to run over a network. Of course a Python programmer could enhance this with code to create a simple thumbnailing system.

Python 3 Source Code
# Use a browswer as interface to print stock photos # # Simply execute this from within the same folder that contains the jpg or png files. # import os from os import listdir from os.path import isfile, join import urllib.request import webbrowser wasatchSoftRIP = '127.0.0.1:80' # localhost - edit this to address your Wasatch SoftRIP columns = 4 headline = '<h1>Click any image to print</h1><p/>Example of printing simple stock to Wasatch SoftRIP from a folder<p/>' folder = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)) # current working folder where script is running - should contain only the files that may be printed, and this script def supportedFile(f): filename, file_extension = os.path.splitext(f) ext = file_extension.lower() # make this insensitive to case return ext == '.jpg' or ext == '.png' def makeLink(file, copiesToPrint, printUnit): # this is the link that will submit the file to SoftRIP url = 'http://' + wasatchSoftRIP + '/xmlSubmission.dyn?' data = '<WASATCH ACTION=JOB><PRINTUNIT>' + str(printUnit) + '</PRINTUNIT><PAGE>' data += '<FILENAME>' + file + '</FILENAME>' data += '<Copies>' + str(copiesToPrint) + '</Copies>' data += '</PAGE></WASATCH>' url += urllib.parse.quote_plus(data) # escape all special characters in data return url # # now build the body of the html page, with an entry for every jpg file # body = headline + '\n' count = 0 for f in listdir("."): if isfile(f): if supportedFile(f): body += '<a href="' + makeLink(join(folder, f), 1, 1)+ '"> ' body += '<img width=100 src="' + f + '" />' body += '</a> \n' count = count + 1 if count >= columns: # organize page into columns body += '<br/>\n' count = 0 # # the following lines create and execute an html file (in a browser in a properly set up OS) # htmlFile = 'temp.html' f = open(htmlFile, 'w') f.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Demo</TITLE></HEAD><BODY>' + body + '</BODY></HTML>') f.close() webbrowser.open(htmlFile) # execute the html file in a browser

HTML/Javascript Source Code for 'httpService\interfaces\default\submissionAck.html'
<HTML> <HEAD><TITLE>Processing</TITLE> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> </HEAD> <BODY> <h1>Processing...</h1> <script> setTimeout( "history.go(-1);", 2000);  </script> </BODY> </HTML>