Weird behaviour scanning 2D barcode off driver license using SYMBOL

[southbeach]

Hello!

For some time I have played with the idea of writing a PHP library to scan USA driver licenses using a standard 2D barcode scanner. Well, I finally bought a SYMBOL scanner and my enthusiasm was cut short when upon scanning my own driver license into a simple <textarea> box the browser went crazy and all sorts of things appeared to be happening ... well, not that many but a few.

It appears as if the scanning of the 2D code triggered hotkeys like executions and my browser started to open windows (I use Firefox).

If I scan the same into a windows text document I can see the data segment broken into lines as if there are NL/LF characters embedded within ... If I scan it within a notepad ++ document I get a long line ...

Now my question:
How does one capture the data scanned without triggering browsers' built in behavior nor submitting the form?

Thank you all in advance for your assistance!


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SouthBeach

http://www.fpgroups.com

The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.

 

[jpadie]

Sounds like a problem in the reader library. Perhaps it is not escaping tab characters. Which probably means it is not escaping other characters either.

But a workaround might be to attach a onsubmit action to the form tag that cancels submit if a checkbox is not set. Ugly but possibly easier than fixing the reader library

 

[southbeach]

@jpadie, I was thinking alone the line of your suggestion but using JS to check each character and "hard code" what is or not CR vs LF or TAB ...

I hate hard coding anything but might be a, as you said, ugly but necessary solution!

Thanks,




--
SouthBeach

http://www.fpgroups.com

The good thing about not knowing is the opportunity to learn - Yours truly, 2008.