Bar Code Question

[zevious]

This may sound stupid but I'm trying to gain some understanding of how make something happen.

I currently have a web-based database driven application written in php and html. Works great. Basically we have an archive of film and tapes. My boss wants to add bar codes to our products. My thought was that I could add a new field to the mysql database to store the bar code for the item. (The bar code will most likely be the record number from the database but some of the items take more than 1 box so it will be slightly more complicated. Anyhow, I can sort that out.) I am slightly confused as to how I can scan a bar code and use that in my php application. Am I missing something simple here? Anyone have experience with this? Do the barcode scanners act like keyboard entry? Any help or pointers you can give me will be greatly appareciated.

TIA!

[Anon]

Take a look at some bar code. Under it, you should find a number. The bar code is a representation of this particular number adapted to ... bar code reader machines. It is vastly simpler to program bar code detection than a character recognition process. The point is that a bar code is just a number (well, not just, there are standards).
There are two processes invoved here.
1° Creating bar codes : this can be achieved by using the GD library.
2° Inputing bar codes : the bar code scanner output can be a flat file. So what you have to do is to take a look at the output and build a parser.
But, even if you could do this easily with PHP, I do not really see the point of doing this kind of work with web interface, and I would prefer to use a standalone application that will not need the ressources of a web server and PHP to work.

[zevious]

I was planning to use an external application to create the bar codes - at least initially. I guess the reason I want to use php is two fold. 1. I know php and am not versed in other languages - yet. 2. We need to track items when they go in and out of our warehouse. Since the rest of the data regarding an item is in the

mysql database, it just seems like that's the place to keep the status as well. So, I have to interface the scan of a barcode back to the database..

[peashant_st]

i am not having bar code scanner. is there any way to simulated the bar code reading process in some way?