Barcode Scanner + PHP?

[Armitage]

Preferably on Linux, but not required.
Anybody have any experience with this? Hardware Recomendations?
I need to build a library/inventory system very quickly (in support of the space shuttle investigation actually).

 

[Superwormy]

Barcode scanners are usually pretty simple, the scan the code, and most come with software that will take whatever you scanned and emulate it as keyboard input.

So you can | || |||| | || and that translates to ' a 265 bc d 34 ' and that gets sent to the computer as keyboard input, so from there you coul dhave it fill in an HTML form, javascript submit(); and be all set.

 

[RSMemphis]

I have been pondering about this for a while, and the only way I can think of doing that is to use a pipe.

Meaning you have to be able to send all the barcode info into a pipe, and use popen in php to read the pipe.

PHP is not designed to handle this.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: Superwormy
Barcode scanners are usually pretty simple, the scan the code, and most come with software that will take whatever you scanned and emulate it as keyboard input.

So you can | || |||| | || and that translates to ' a 265 bc d 34 ' and that gets sent to the computer as keyboard input, so from there you coul dhave it fill in an HTML form, javascript submit(); and be all set.

Ok, maybe I'll have to learn some javascript to make this work.
Your description of the data coming in like a keyboard input rings some bells from from playing around with cuecats. I have a cuecat that I can probably make do with until I can get a real scanner.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: RSMemphis
I have been pondering about this for a while, and the only way I can think of doing that is to use a pipe.

Meaning you have to be able to send all the barcode info into a pipe, and use popen in php to read the pipe.

PHP is not designed to handle this.

But I'd have to reload the page to accomplish this wouldn't I?
I'd like to have the input page up, scan the barcode, and have it appear in the proper field.

I'm thinking that the data input and item checkout might not be best accomplished via a web page.