I have an intranet app that needs to know where to print some labels. We have multiple workstations setup. I need a way to retrieve the host name of the client so that when they print something it es out of the correct printer. Right now I have this being set at login but was curious if I could actually pull the host name on the client side, then on the server side i could easily parse the hostname to set the printer. The solves the problem of a user being logged into two workstations at once. Granted it shouldn't happen but users will be users.

The application is printing labels to a zebra printer so the printing occurs on the server but the print job is sent to the label printer that is next to the workstation being used.

TIA!

I have an intranet app that needs to know where to print some labels. We have multiple workstations setup. I need a way to retrieve the host name of the client so that when they print something it es out of the correct printer. Right now I have this being set at login but was curious if I could actually pull the host name on the client side, then on the server side i could easily parse the hostname to set the printer. The solves the problem of a user being logged into two workstations at once. Granted it shouldn't happen but users will be users.

The application is printing labels to a zebra printer so the printing occurs on the server but the print job is sent to the label printer that is next to the workstation being used.

TIA!

• javascript
• jquery

• If it's an intranet, is IE required, or can you use whatever? – Robert Commented Jun 15, 2011 at 14:49

2 Answers 2

Since the printing is done server-side, why do you need a JavaScript solution?

What you need is to check whatever is the equivalent to the REMOTE_HOST and/or REMOTE_ADDR CGI variables on your server's implementation.

Edit: in case you can't change the printing code, reverting to a separate script called through AJAX, as Andrew suggested, may be a way of getting what you want. But it looks like a very circuitous way of doing it.

There isn't any reliable way to do what you're asking without using an external script and requesting it via Ajax.

See also: Can I perform a DNS lookup (hostname to IP address) using client-side Javascript?

Edit: note, if you can it would be better (less HTTP requests) and easier to just include the host name in a dynamically generated <script> tag on the server-side before the page is loaded, that way the data is already there when you need it.