About

Ruby CUPS provides a wrapper for the Common UNIX Printing System, allowing rubyists to perform basic tasks like printer discovery, job submission & querying.

This library is opinionated in a few respects:

  • Setting up CUPS & requisite print drivers is already part of your sys-admin repertoire
  • By implication you don't want another GUI to manage it all
  • You’re only looking for destinations which have been set up locally

Although this, like everything else is open to change.

Get it

sudo gem install cups

Let's print something!

require 'cups'
page = Cups::PrintJob.new("/invoice.pdf")
page.print # => 127

Instantiate a PrintJob object, call print on it, and you've got yourself a job number there.

What happened to my job?

page.state # => "Processing..."
page.cancel # => true

Which printer do I want?

Cups.show_destinations # => ["office", "home"]
Cups.default_printer # => "office"