Barcode Scanning - is barcode scanned or typed?

[aveshn]

Hi there
We have mobile apps that scan barcodes. We use the PSION Teklogix Scanners.

I need a way to determine if a barcode was scanned or if the user manually typed the barcode in?

Any Ideas?

Regards
Avesh

[markmcgookin]

I have never used those scanners myself, but if there is no way with the data to tell, you could easily catch the event of the user typing something and flag that for the data being input manually. Or having them have to hit a button "Enter Code" that would flag this up for you...

Just a thought.

Mark

[aveshn]

yeah i though about letting the user hit "F1 = enter manually" or "F9 = scan" but thats just not the "right way" of doing things.

[markmcgookin]

yeah i though about letting the user hit "F1 = enter manually" or "F9 = scan" but thats just not the "right way" of doing things.

Right way schmight way.... if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I think it would be perfectly valid to catch either the event of your scanner being used or the user's text entry to check if a valid bar code has been put in... a simple bool "switch" would work. So set it to true then if the user enters text set it to false.

Some solutions aren't worth the hassle of a complex algorithm when a simple work around will do the job 100%

[aveshn]

i found the solution and it was pretty simple in the end.
the dll had all the necessary events that i needed, in particular the ScannerTriggerEvent, so when the trigger on scanner was pressed i simply set a variable in the ScannerTriggerEvent.

[markmcgookin]

i found the solution and it was pretty simple in the end.
the dll had all the necessary events that i needed, in particular the ScannerTriggerEvent, so when the trigger on scanner was pressed i simply set a variable in the ScannerTriggerEvent.

Excellent, glad you got it sorted!