Has anyone integrate this capability using the mobile device’s capability to populate fields. We are looking to track materials by scanning their bar and QR codes to find the product in the database.
Question
bar code QR code scanning
+7This topic has been closed for replies.
+17- Nintex Employee
We have not seen it done, but it completely should be feasible. The device should be able to make the ID scanned from the QR code available to the browser, and you should be able to inject that value into a field using our Javascript API.
There is a Java library, called zxing, that was particularly designed for the mobile use-case. I worked with it to develop a web application that will both generate and scan in QR codes and found it easy to work with. There are also complete code samples on the internet for scanning QR codes with the phone’s camera and decoding them with zxing, as is discussed here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23156399/how-to-decode-a-barcode-from-camera-preview-using-zxing-…
From there you could open a URL, passing the QR code’s value in as a query string parameter, for example.
+7Did anyone get this running where you can scan a barcode value into a search field on salesforce1?
+6- Nintex Employee
Processing a QR code is pretty easy in javascript (or, rather, there are several libraries that can handle this). The main issue is gaining access to your device’s camera to get a live streaming video, which is pretty much the only way to make QR code scanning feasible.
Within the last couple years many browsers have begun adding the ability to access the device’s camera from Javascript via the Media Streaming standard (aka getUserMedia). HTML5 support is slightly older, but didn’t provide a way of accessing the camera from Javascript (it focused on uploading photos/videos to a server). Mobile browsers (ironically) have lagged behind the most in adding streaming support. Android only got this feature with version 5 (Lollipop) and iOS still does not support it. See the following URLs for more details:
The official specification is still in the draft phase, making this technology pretty bleeding edge (although I think it’s probably stable at this point).
I’d expect general support (especially on mobile devices) to firm up in the next year or so, at which point a javascript-based QR code scanner will become much more feasible. I have personally taken an interest in this and actually built out a prototype roughly a year ago, but the mobile browser support was so bad back then that it was pretty much unusable. It’d be fun to revisit, now that Android has added support.
The following contains quote a lot of assumptions and guesses. It’s not be rigorously tested, so definitely take with a grain of salt:
The Salesforce1 app uses a “web view” to render HTML content (I assume), so support for javascript APIs is going to be dependent on whatever browser is running on the system (guessing: they could override default browser capabilities to add or even remove support). On iOS, I’d guess that Salesforce1 is using Safari (even Chrome for iOS uses a Safari WebView, or so I’ve heard). On Android, I’m not sure if Salesforce1 uses the standard Android browser or if it respects a user-overridden default. In either case, it’ll be dependent on the capabilities of the system’s browser. So it’s possible that a QR scanner would work in Salesforce1 on one Android device but not on another, depending on the OS version and the default browser selected by the user.
+8Just some anecdotal tidbits from me. The only mobile device I’ve successfully done a QR scan from is my Android with the Firefox browser installed on it. I’ve also gotten it to work in Chrome and Firefox on my laptop. (Kinda funny holding the QR code in front of my laptop’s webcam though.
+8We have an application built for scanning barcodes but they do require a bluetooth barcode reader - it works very well … the code is scanned straight into the search box and the relevant product returned without a problem.
If anyone gets it working with a device camera let me know )
+10The issue with using a device camera is it’s much, much slower than using a barcode reader. The camera needs to focus to see the bar/QR code properly and takes additional time to do so. I recall using a javascript library for accessing the camera and quickly abandoned it because of this slowness that couldn’t be worked around. I’ve noticed similar camera based scanners to operate the same way (eg. TicketLeap’s camera scanner for their tickets)
+10Yes it’s one of the primary complaints people have at our organization about using the Ticketleap scanners. They wish that they could use our handheld scanner with ticketleap as it scans basically instantly whereas the ticketleap scanner can take a few seconds of awkwardly holding a QR code up to the camera to pick up the code properly.
+20I’m implementing a small custom ERP using barcodes. Barcodes from a regular printer and barcode scanners from Amazon worked for the POC on a custom ERP I’m building out.
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