Agreed, it's good for the user experience to let them know when you're printing 
something (or doing most things) on their behalf.  Print dialogs are good for 
this.

However, just to explore what I *think* is the thing you're trying to do, let's 
assume a few things about this _hypothetical_ server app you're talking about:

1.  The user, for some reason, either already knows about and expects this 
print job, or will never see it or care about its existence.
2.  You have a way to determine what user is triggering the report (perhaps 
with a username, login creds, or whatnot).
3.  You can match the user to the printer(s) associated with them.  JSON files 
might be a good, simple way to store this info.
4.  The server running node has access to the same network/printers that the 
user triggering the report does.

If all of the above are true, you could use node to grab the printer name 
associated with the user triggering the report and have it execute a local 
print job to the same printer the user has as a "default" printer, provided 
that you kept the data store that has the key/value pair up to date (otherwise 
you'd be printing to an out-of-date "default" printer).  You'd need to pass the 
user creds to the server, and have the printers installed on the server, 
obviously.

It's worth it, I think, to do some strong consideration about the end-user 
experience; simpler is almost always better, and don't make the user think.

I hope this helps point you in the right direction, and good luck!




-Skyler



On Feb 10, 2012, at 5:43 AM, blackFLINT wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Please I need some help and a friend suggested using node.js. The
> issue at hand is that I am writing a cakePHP application that uses
> jquery for validations. I'm now at a deadlock however. I want to print
> straight to the default printer without popping up the printer dialog
> on the clientside browser. Does anyone have any idea how node can
> help.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> blackFLINT
> 
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