Populate Textfield Using Barcode Scanner

[DKinsley]

Is it possible to populate a textfield in a LiveCycle form using a barcode scanner?

[Jono_Moore · Accepted solution]

Yeah, I think most barcode scanners can be set to spit out text or whatever you want. Nothing to do with LiveCycle.

I've got one I've used for some testing and it will dump data into wherever the cursor is.

[DKinsley]

Okay - great, thank you.

-Don

[SI_MSD7]

Jono,

Can you expand on this... What happens if that singer barcode contain various info / data nodes? I can understand placing the cursor in a single field, but have you encountered situations where scanning a single barcode populates multiple fields at one time? My assumption is that there has to be a "connection" of some sort to associate the barcode data witht he fields. I'd imagine this would be easy if the baracode data was encoded as XML and the field names where the same.  But even then, what would be the  mechanism to initiate the import process?

Lastly, what scanner are you using?

Thanks in advance for any input; I'm looking for a much needed solution in this area.

[Jono_Moore]

We have a Code Reader 2500 http://codecorp.com/products.php?id=57

As far as I know it just works as a virtual keyboard. You might be able to get it to skip from field to field using tab or carriage returns embedded in the data but I have know idea if that would work. If you are trying to dump xml field data in you may need to dump it into one field and then have code that parses the data and does it for you but I don't know if that would work either.

You could alway write it out to an XML file and import it that way.

Code has a piece of software called CodeXML Router that apparently allows you to pipe the data through any piece of software so there might be something you can do there. http://codecorp.com/products.php?id=74

Hopefully somebody here who knows more about getting data into a LC form will chime in.

[SI_MSD7]

Cool. I appreciate the info!

I did some additional research and found an iOS app called iCody which allows you to use a mobile device's camera as a barcode scanner. There are also external scanning devices you can add to your mobile device if you want the traditional red light scanner (by Mobilogics).  The iCody app is pretty good in that you can scan several barcodes and then remotely send them, collectively, to any running app on your computer (via a client application called Thetis).   You can specify the delimiter as tab separated and set the app to interpret every tab as a new field.

So basically, you can have a data generated for several barcodes dump into numerous “chronological” fields on a form, but not “specific fields”. However, if you scan your barcodes in a specific order, and then transmit the data, it “should” populate the fields in same order the form was designed.

The app also makes talk about being able to tie data into Filemaker Go, which one go then exported from there into a form.

So, nonetheless, it seems there are some possible solutions with a little finessing

[SI_MSD7]

PS. @Jono

What I described in my post seems very similar to what CodeXML Router does. The Thetis client application (Windows/Mac)  is connected via wifi and receives info from your mobile device.