bizzabo-zpl

A virtual label printer for your desktop.

bizzabo-zpl listens on a TCP port and behaves like a networked thermal label printer that speaks ZPL. Point an application at it instead of at real hardware and every label it tries to print is rendered to an image you can look at, while the ZPL stream itself is decoded command by command.

Why this exists

This tool was built to work with the Bizzabo Onsite Command iOS application, which prints attendee badges at events. Testing that path normally means having a physical label printer on the same network, which is rarely true while developing. bizzabo-zpl stands in for one, and is useful for three things:

• Debugging network connectivity with printers. Because it logs every connection and every command it receives, you can tell whether an app is reaching the printer at all, what it is sending, and where a handshake stops.
• Running label tests without a printer. You see the rendered badge on screen instead of waiting on hardware and consuming stock, which makes iterating on a label layout much faster.
• Integration testing when printers are unavailable. Bizzabo uses it internally for exactly that, so the printing path can be exercised without hardware in the loop.

Nothing about it is specific to that application, though. Any client that speaks ZPL over a TCP socket will work.

What it does

• Accepts connections on port 9100, the convention for raw network printing.
• Renders each completed label format (^XA … ^XZ) to a PNG.
• Serves a web interface with a gallery of every label printed, a live log, and settings. This is what you get by default; --headless gives you the terminal and your image viewer instead.
• Decodes the ZPL stream into named commands with their parameters, so you can see exactly what your application emitted.
• Answers the control commands (! U1 getvar, ! U1 setvar, ! U1 do) that applications use to interrogate a printer, retaining variables that get set.
• Handles many clients at once, and does not assume that one network read contains exactly one message, so labels split across packets or batched together in a single write are both handled correctly.

Requirements

Python 3.12 or newer. One dependency, aiohttp, for the web interface.

Install

With uv:

uv tool install bizzabo-zpl

pip install bizzabo-zpl works the same way. To run it once without installing anything:

uvx bizzabo-zpl

Development

The project uses uv. It will fetch a suitable Python itself, so nothing needs to be installed first.

uv sync         # create the environment
uv run pytest   # run the test suite
uv run bizzabo-zpl

uv sync installs the dev dependency group by default, so pytest is available without extra flags. To build a wheel and a source distribution:

uv build

Usage

bizzabo-zpl

Or without installing the entry point:

python -m bizzabo_zpl

The server prints the address it is listening on. Configure your application to print to that host and port, then print a label.

Options

Web interface

Running bizzabo-zpl serves an interface on http://127.0.0.1:8082 and opens it in your browser. This is the default, because a gallery of labels beats one image viewer window per label.

The interface gives you:

• A gallery of every label printed, newest first. Each one can be saved as a PNG or dismissed. Click one to see it full size alongside the decoded command list and the raw ZPL, which is usually the fastest way to find out why a badge came out wrong.
• A live log of connections, control commands, and errors, filterable by level and searchable.
• Settings for label size, resolution, and port, plus a start/stop control for the printer server, all without restarting the process.

Because it is served over HTTP rather than drawn as a desktop window, you can open it from another machine on your network — useful when the device driving the printer is a phone or tablet and you want to watch labels appear on your laptop. It also works over SSH or inside a container, so the same interface serves local debugging and automated testing.

The interface binds to localhost only. The printer server it controls binds to all interfaces, as described below.

Terminal mode

bizzabo-zpl --headless

Logs to the terminal and opens each rendered label in your image viewer, with no web interface at all. Add --no-open-labels to log only, which is what you want in CI, over SSH, or in a container where there is no viewer to open.

How labels are rendered

bizzabo-zpl does not rasterize ZPL itself. Rendering is delegated to Labelary, a public web service that turns a label format into an image. Each completed format is posted there over HTTPS. The web interface keeps the returned PNGs in memory and serves them; --headless writes each one to a temporary file so your image viewer can open it, and does not delete it afterwards.

This means label content leaves your machine. Labels printed through bizzabo-zpl should be test data. Do not point it at a production workload or print labels containing personal or otherwise sensitive information.

Network exposure

The server binds to all interfaces so that a phone or tablet elsewhere on your network can reach it, which is the point. It performs no authentication and is meant for a trusted local network. Do not expose it to the internet.

Disclaimer

ZPL is a printer control language originally developed by Zebra Technologies Corporation. This project is an independent, unofficial tool. It is not affiliated with, authorized by, endorsed by, or sponsored by Zebra Technologies Corporation, and it is neither a Zebra product nor a substitute for one. Any trademarks referenced here are the property of their respective owners and are used only to describe what this software is compatible with.

bizzabo-zpl emulates a subset of the language for development and debugging purposes. It is not a complete or certified implementation, and its output is an approximation of what real hardware would produce.

License

MIT