Barcode reader input

Denver Open Media is looking at moving to a barcode reader too. I've spec'ed what it will take to do this well. I will post more details by the end of the week.

Sorry it's taken so long to get back to this. We had to scale back what we're developing for DOM based on their budget. This work won't change the checkout/in interface, but will combine a new module for with a UI for barcode input and a Views Bulk Operation for adding items as a node reference to a new merci_inventory content type. The VBO can be used without the barcode UI. Obviously using a scanner will streamline the workflow. The VBO can be applied to any View so you can create customized interfaces for different inventories. A nightly inventory of commonly checkout items, a full inventory of city owned equipment, etc.

Our current plan is to base barcode lookups will off of http://drupal.org/project/barcode. merci_inventory can be used to quickly push a new barcode field to all content types MERCI manages. The Barcode module can be used with existing barcode tags or to generate new barcoded labels.

This new code will be committed before Thanksgiving with some documentation and a screencast on how to configure it before the end of November.

Module committed - http://drupal.org/project/vbo_barcode_select
Screencast created - http://openmediaproject.blip.tv/file/4389762/

Please try this out and give us feedback.

Getting the barcode functionality into the checkout form is on the to-do list. vbo_barcode_select was intended to be a first step. I'd like to get that in before the spring semester starts, but I think using a single text field to "scan into" like the inventory Views is better approach than just using the scanner on the existing form. Obviously the vbo_barcode_select can't be used on the checkout form because it isn't a View, but the javascript written for vbo_barcode_select can be adapted to work with MERCI's select lists on checkout.

This approach solves the problem of selecting the item that starts with the same letters or numbers. With the vbo_barcode_select.js, if there isn't an exact match the "Barcode not found" error is shown. This also has the added bonus of not requiring a setting to know whether the computer doing the checkout has a scanner attached. The form can be used with or without the scanner.

Making these changes to the javascript and loading the script in the check-in form is probably < 2 hours of work. Unfortunately that would only work for sites that use the barcodes as the title of the node. So far, yours is the only site I've seen like that. Most sites use human readable names for their Bucket nodes.

To develop a solution that works for everyone, we need 2 more things...

- Barcode field selection (like vbo_barcode_select, the field that contains the barcode value should be flexible)
- Barcode field values of available items and corresponding node ids loaded as JSON or looked up via AJAX so they are available to the javascript. Ideally this would be filtered by the user and dates like the select lists themselves. JSON is easier, but AJAX would be more flexible. If someone returns an item after the checkout form is load, AJAX would allow that. JSON would require the form to be reloaded.

None of this is extremely complicated, but I don't have time to do it now. I'm always happy to review patches!