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Barcode.Detect

Detects a barcode.

Component Version macOS Windows Linux Server iOS SDK
Barcode 3.5 ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes ✅ Yes
MBS( "Barcode.Detect"; Image { ; type; ReturnType; TryRotation; Encoding } )   More

Parameters

Parameter Description Example Flags
Image The image to scan for a barcode.
Can be container with image or an Image reference number from our GraphicsMagick image functions.		 $image
type Which scanner to use. Supported types: Aztec, Codabar, Code39, Code93, Code128, DataMatrix, EAN8, EAN13, ITF, PDF417, QRCode, UPCA and UPCE. Pass All to scan for all types.
Default is all.		 "QRCode" Optional
ReturnType A boolean to return the type as prefix. Pass 1 if you need prefix. Default is 0 for no prefix. 1 Optional
TryRotation A boolean value. If 1, the plugin will rotate the image 90° to find vertical barcode.
Default is true.		 1 Optional
Encoding The text encoding for text parameter.
Default is UTF-8.
Possible encoding names: ANSI, ISO-8859-1, Latin1, Mac, Native, UTF-8, DOS, Hex, Base64 or Windows. More listed in the FAQ.		 UTF8 Optional

Result

Returns barcode content text or error.

Description

Detects a barcode.
We use zxing library internally and can only detect what this library handles.
Internally all images are converted to grayscale. For you getting image, it's very important to get a sharp image.
You may need to rotate or crop the image before sending into this method.

Leave some white space around as some decoders don't want to start with black frame on the edge. The barcodes generated with Barcode.Generate often don't read as they have too little resolution (e.g. scale up by 3x) and no white border around (e.g. add 5 pixels).

If special characters or umlauts are not recognized correct, you may have a wrong encoding. Most modern apps use UTF8 for encoding.

For MacOS and iOS, you can also detect barcodes with CoreImage.Detect function, which is faster and can better find a barcode on a picture.

Please note that Barcode.Detect uses zxing library, which can't read all barcodes well. For that reason we got Barcode.Scan using zbar library, which may be better.

For FileMaker Go, please use PSoS and do the scan server side. Or build your own app based on the FileMaker iOS SDK with Xcode and embed the MBS Plugin for on device detection.

See also Barcode.DetectAsJSON to get more detailed output of the result.

Examples

Query a QRCode:

MBS( "Barcode.Detect"; Images::Image; "QRCode" )

See also

Release notes

  • Version 12.2
  • Version 11.2
    • Updated zxing library to get a few newer bug fixes for Barcode.Detect function.
  • Version 8.2
    • Changed Barcode.Detect to report the version number read when complaining about invalid version in QRCode.
    • Fixed crash with Barcode.Detect with out of bounds access in image for bad QRCodes.
  • Version 8.0
    • Fixed out of bounds problem in Barcode.Detect. And now returns checksum errors properly.

Example Databases

Blog Entries

This function checks for a license.

Created 18th August 2014, last changed 22nd September 2024


Backdrop.Install - Barcode.DetectAsJSON