LongRange Developer Forum

Hi,

I am about to create an app that can do 2d barcode scanning and magnetic card swiping of a driver’s license, parse the information from the 2d barcode/magnetic stripe, and auto-populate the form entry fields.

I read through the programming documents and found out certain LongRange UI barcode property for an LINEA PRO 4 scanner. Checking out the device’s website
(http://ipclineapro.com) – they have some device models that can do both the 2d barcode scanning and card swiping.

Question: I just want to know if anyone of you had created an LongRange app similar to the requirement mentioned above. If yes,
- What brand of device did you use that can do both card swipe/barcode scan?
- Data parsing – is it done by device’s internal application (if there is any) or should it be done by the LongRange RPG event handler?
- It would be great to post a simple code snippet/sample of capturing the string data from the card and populate it to a form text field.

Thanks!
[Cevan]

- What brand of device did you use that can do both card swipe/barcode scan?

Linear Pro is for iOS only. It’s a very specialized device that can also read magnetic card stripes. I believe they use them in the Apple stores. For iPhones the Linea Pro device is special cradle the iPhone sits in. Other people use separate hand held HID Bluetooth barcode scanners that will work with iOS or Android. Other people just use the device’s camera – which is very effective at scanning 2D/QR type codes.

We use a 'Socket Mobile 7Xi' cordless hand scanner for testing. It can scan 1D and 2D barcodes. We use it in HID keyboard mode.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImI_oqXICGk and http://ww1.socketmobile.com/products/bl ... nners.aspx

The element Type : Barcode in LongRange (http://www.longrangemobile.com/docs/LRP ... arcode.htm) is a specialized input field. The input can come from the device's camera, a hardware scanner or from a real or virtual keyboard. To trigger an OnScanComplete event and send a manually input or hardware scanned value back to the server you currently need to use (or inject) a TAB key. Only camera scanned values are sent back automatically. This may necessitate a second (even dummy) input field on the screen that you can tab to and configuring the hardware scanner to append/inject a TAB key to the end of the scanned code (they can all do this – it is a common scanner configuration).


- Data parsing – is it done by device’s internal application (if there is any) or should it be done by the LongRange RPG event handler?

It is done by the hardware device or by the camera software. The RPG program gets the decoded value only.

- It would be great to post a simple code snippet/sample of capturing the string data from the card and populate it to a form text field.

The RPG shipped demos has four bar code scanning examples shipped with source code. The Human Resources -> Assets and Programming Examples -> Use Case Examples -> Bar Codes and Dynamic Bar Codes and QR Codes. These would give you a starting point I think. If you have any issues getting them to work please ask more questions on this forum.

Sorry - I should have added that you can’t yet use the Linea-Pro to read magnetic stripes – only bar codes.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the prompt reply!
I checked out socket mobile's website and the scanner seems the device I need for my app..

just some followup question though...

Q1: You mentioned that the SoMo scanner can do data parsing - does that mean the device extracts data from the input (ex: 2d barcode/pdf417 format of a driver's license), parceling it, and then relegating the result to individual parser elements/containers (i.e. a container for the name, another container for date of birth, another for address etc.).
Then its up to your LongRange RPG handler to get those information from their individual containers and put it to the corresponding LongRange form fields?
(im trying to have a clear idea on how the scanned data is parsed and eventually transfered to your LR app forms for display )

Q2: From SoMo's website, it mentioned an optional software called Socketscan10 SDK (it's a set of middleware apis that allows your app (in our case, a LR app) to have better control of the 7xi barcode scanner - device funtions and data management). Can you use this APIs inside LongRange? If yes, with regards to my initial requirements, do I need these APIs?

Thanks again.

I don’t know the answers. Could you put a few samples in a MS-Word document and post to this forum? Then I can try out the scanner and camera on them.

Hi Mark,

I have attached a sample of a driver's license 2d barcode. Thanks again.

Using this type of scanner http://ww1.socketmobile.com/products/bl ... X2864-1336 I get this information from the details on the card (I have omitted some identifying details <<xxxxxxx>>):

C92561200770423
@
6
ANSI 636012030001DL00000367DLDCAG
DCBX
DCDNONE
DBA20121229
DCS<<last name>>
DCT<<first names>>
DBD20111212
DBB19770423
DBC1
DAYNONE
DAU165 cm
DAG<<street address>>
DAIMISSISSAUGA
DAJON
DAKL5R 0E2
DAQC9256-12007-<xxxxx>
DCFCE7764758
DCGCAN
DCHNONE
DCK*1774346*

This is what the RPG program would get as one long field. It seems to be a CR/LF or tab delimited set of data where the first 3 or 4 characters on each line are the record type. This would be pretty easy to pull apart in a standardized RPG function – probably passing the long string in and getting back a well formatted data structure. I guess the structure of this bar code data is documented somewhere?

About using the APIs – currently the only device we support a unique product API set for is the Linea pro device. From working with the 7XI scanner I can’t see that they would add much value to your ability to control the device - it seems to work very well. I guess the best way to confirm this is to purchase one and experiment with it.

MarkDuignan wrote:Sorry - I should have added that you can’t yet use the Linea-Pro to read magnetic stripes – only bar codes.

Is this a typo error? Do you mean CHS 7xi and not Linea Pro? Because LineaPro have scanner models that can do barcode scan and magnetic card reading (Line Pro 4 MSR 2D and Linea Pro 4 MSR 2D BT) Thanks.

MarkDuignan wrote:Using this type of scanner http://ww1.socketmobile.com/products/bl ... X2864-1336 I get this information from the details on the card (I have omitted some identifying details <<xxxxxxx>>):

C92561200770423
@
6
ANSI 636012030001DL00000367DLDCAG
DCBX
DCDNONE
DBA20121229
DCS<<last name>>
DCT<<first names>>
DBD20111212
DBB19770423
DBC1
DAYNONE
DAU165 cm
DAG<<street address>>
DAIMISSISSAUGA
DAJON
DAKL5R 0E2
DAQC9256-12007-<xxxxx>
DCFCE7764758
DCGCAN
DCHNONE
DCK*1774346*

This is what the RPG program would get as one long field. It seems to be a CR/LF or tab delimited set of data where the first 3 or 4 characters on each line are the record type. This would be pretty easy to pull apart in a standardized RPG function – probably passing the long string in and getting back a well formatted data structure. I guess the structure of this bar code data is documented somewhere?

About using the APIs – currently the only device we support a unique product API set for is the Linea pro device. From working with the 7XI scanner I can’t see that they would add much value to your ability to control the device - it seems to work very well. I guess the best way to confirm this is to purchase one and experiment with it.

Ok. Thanks a lot Mark! That's my only questions for now

The Linear-Pro device we have been using is not a Bluetooth device. You have to use their API set in your iOS code to connect to it. In the API mode we have only implemented the bar code API set - not the magnetic stripe reader API set. If they also have Bluetooth models they would work in all modes I think.