Print service with user payment

Question

Working at a company, I've been set to develop a print service solution which will be used from multiple platforms. The service should be available at least from Windows (native print dialog), OSX, IOS and Android. I need to be able to see which user is printing, how many pages etc.

I'm looking for a system like CUPS for Windows or Linux, which allows me add/connect to this payment system. The payment system confirms the user have enough points to be able to print the given document. The system should be as transparent as possible for the user and he/she should be able to print like a normal network printer.

The payment system is an existing product, so my system should only handle printing and user authentication.

My first thought was to develop a simple listener that would be running on the server and the clients could connect to, add files to the print queue and print if they had enough points. How ever I could not find any tutorial or similar projects for this approach. Therefore I'm looking into adjusting an already existing product for my needs.

I have made a drawing of how I think the system should look like

Answer 1

I found a solution using CUPS with Tea4Cups. Tea4Cups provides pre/post-hooks where the user can define some scripts/commands to run before and after the document is sent to the printer.

More information about this here:

https://serverfault.com/questions/208268/run-command-before-and-after-printing-with-cups

Run a script when user press print, and not start spooling before script ends (linux, cups)