🆕 🦓 Barcode Scanner | New Feature

We’re making it easier than ever to track items at work—Glide apps can now scan barcodes, using your device’s camera. Learn more at Glide Docs

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Can’t wait to have more and more barcodes supported !

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@sebastiansolari A challenge is the maximum of 1000 scans/month. Don’t really understand why the limit is that low - but maybe you have chosen a expensive sub supplier for barcode scanning

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Totally agree. Don’t understand this low limit. In case our apps need this feature, i.e pro App such as Inventory, we would need much more than 1000 ! Si i miss some point ?

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If someone needs more than 1,000 scans/month, please contact us and tell us more about your app. We are happy to help.

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hi.
Is there a limit to the number of times I can use the free plan?

10 scans/month. So this is just for testing out the functionality. Otherwise you will need a pro plan

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Never used this myself, but it keeps popping up in my circles, so if this is of any use to anyone, I hope it helps!

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Hi @sebastiansolari,

I’m new to Glide and am trying to make a library scanner app for my own book collection.

My app aims to scan ISBN barcode from book covers, use ISBN to pull book information via Google Books API in sheets, and save scanned books.

When trying to build the app, I’ve used up my 10 barcode scan quota during testing, and would like to know barcode scan quota for the paid Basic App (1000 scan in Pro App is too much for me at this learning/testing stage).

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@fakemeat doing something similar we should collab. I agree the 1k monthly limit is a disadvantage.

for instance in the inventory Pro App, does that mean it will only allow you to scan and update 1k sku per month?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scankey-qr-ocr-nfc-keyboard/id1356206918 for iOS users this is free

I tested the scanner with two different devices using the sample Code-128 from the three websites linked in the documentation but cannot get any to work. The indicator switches from yellow to green but even after 15s it doesn’t complete the process?

@shalomsiy this is what I have so far https://civil-health-5520.glideapp.io/
*noob question - will others be able to duplicate the app using the link and have the sheets used for the app as well? if not I can share the gsheet I use

Current components:

  1. library tab stores the books that you’ve scanned and decided to save to list
  2. scan result tab shows the book info that you’ve just scanned
  3. for the part where the app pulls data from Google Books API in gsheets, I came across a post on reddit doing just that (link)

What I’m trying to do next:

  1. create a statistics feature to see count for different book genres or how many books i’ve bought by month
  2. create link to notes that i’ve taken for the books i’ve read
  3. pull prices from Amazon to see how much my book collection is currently worth lol - I’m really stuck on this part, if anyone has a way to work this out, it’ll be awesome if you could share how it can be done :grinning:

Feedbacks are appreciated, thanks!

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Right now, the barcode button does not seem to be working anymore? I can add a button, but it does not render any GUI element:

I’m wondering if anyone has been able to implement something like the following (successfully):

Goal - scan a barcode and have the details for the item shown on the screen

Process - Floating button with Action:

  1. Scan barcode; number goes into a User-specific column — In the table, there is a relation that goes from the User sheet to the Items sheet; looks for matches of the User-specific Scan to the Item number
  2. Link to Screen — uses that relation to display result (ideally the item # and details of the item that was scanned)

I’m thinking this is because the relation doesn’t exist until the first part of the action fires. If this is the case, how have others used the Barcode function? It seems to me that it can’t be used as a lookup tool (as it works now), but rather a writing tool to just put a value into a new or existing column.

I’m guessing the link to screen happens before the relation is finished linking. What about displaying a bunch of lookups on the same detail screen?

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Hmm I’ll give this a shot and report back!

Somehow adding the ability to scan into a search field would be great. I don’t quote know how that would work, but it’s essentially what I’m trying to accomplish and it’s how I imagine the barcode scanner should work (for some use cases).

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@kyleheney i made a concept app where scanning the barcode and inputting the value (and doing different things based on the value) is separated.
The problem I faced was that the conditions in compound actions only takes places when the action starts and not later. I wanted to scan first - then do a check on the scanned barcode and then decide which way to go in the flow. But this cannot be done at the moment. I do hope we get conditions inside compound actions to be able to branch out to different flows (after the initial conditions in the compound action)

on each action in a compound

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Has anybody found a way to generate 1d barcodes dynamically inside Glide? Is there a service like quickcharts or a google script which can generate barcodes for the new codes entered inside the app.

Edit: Found a url that works for this:

https://barcode.tec-it.com/barcode.ashx?data=
<replace data here>
&code=&multiplebarcodes=true&translate-esc=true&unit=Fit&dpi=96&imagetype=Gif&rotation=0&color=%23000000&bgcolor=%23ffffff&codepage=Default&qunit=Mm&quiet=0&hidehrt=False
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@Jeff_Hager thats exactly the fix I’m using at the moment. I agree with @kyleheney 100% that the scanner would me much more powerful, and usable, if we could create actions based on a successful scan (aka a single relationship found “not empty”).

The fix I’m using now is a visibility condition based on the relationship column to the barcode value.

I then show a button that a user clicks to perform the action to update the column tied to the relation.

But thinking out loud…we could probably use some CSS magic to display a pop up to fake the look and feel of an action being performed after a relationship is found, and bake in actions into two buttons that perform the actions we want to take after a successful scan (one button to perform the action, the other to “cancel” or “go back”.

I’ll try it out and let you know

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@Lisa let us know when you succeed. Interesting to know how you get it to work :sunglasses: