Barcodes with iOS

Barcodes with iOS is the first and only book that comprehensively addresses barcode technology for the iOS developer. It offers an introduction to commonly used formats, such as ISBN and UPC codes, and provides real-world examples that teach you how to integrate code scanning and generation into your apps. This book consolidates information about applicable Apple frameworks in one place so you can quickly add native barcode support to your existing enterprise apps or start building new apps that help bring together the physical and digital worlds.

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Barcodes have been on product packaging for 40 years. As long as there are physical products sold, barcodes will continue to be used because of the maturity and inexpensiveness of the technology. Apple added into the latest release of their mobile iOS operating system all the necessary technologies needed to work with barcodes. For the first time, developers can now make apps that scan barcodes and print them on displays or paper, without needing to license complicated or expensive third-party code libraries.

Barcodes are a universally-accepted way to track and share information about products, applications, and businesses. Until recently, however, it's been difficult for iOS developers to take advantage of them without licensing complicated or expensive third-party libraries.

With iOS7, Apple has added all the necessary components to make apps that scan, display, and print barcodes. Barcodes with iOS 7 is the first and only book that comprehensively addresses barcode technology for the iOS developer. It introduces commonly used formats, such as ISBN and UPC codes and provides real world examples that show how to integrate code scanning and generation into apps.

This book consolidates information about applicable Apple frameworks in one place so readers can quickly add native barcode support to their existing enterprise apps or start building new apps that help bring together the physical and digital worlds.
The topic of barcodes serves as the common thread running through the chapters of this book, but you can dive into specific chapters to learn about particular technologies. Here’s a quick overview of what you will find in each of the chapters.

Chapter 1 introduces you to the barcode types that are natively supported starting with iOS 7. You’ll become a barcode guru and be able to hold your own in any conversation about barcodes, their promises, and their limitations. If you like a good story, flip to appendix A, which recounts the curious history of the mother of all barcodes: the UPC.

Chapter 2 gives you a solid introduction to AV Foundation media capture. You’ll become familiar with the components of this framework, which we’ll use to build a camera app.

Chapter 3 introduces you to the metadata detectors for scanning barcodes, building on the camera preview from chapter 2. At this point, you’ll have a reusable barcode scanner that you can employ in all your apps.

Chapter 4 deals with Apple’s main reason for pushing forward with barcode support in iOS: Passbook. You’ll learn how to generate Passbook tickets with Ruby and how to validate them in an iOS app without the need for server infrastructure.

Chapter 5 looks at how you can generate your own barcodes for display on devices and how you can print them to physical media via AirPrint. You’ll learn about the use of Core Image for generating QR Codes and BarCodeKit for all kinds of 1D barcodes.

Chapter 6 dives into retrieving metadata for scanned barcodes, in particular how to use NSURLSession for creating a web service wrapper. The second half of this chapter is about creating a custom NSURLProtocol and how to stub network requests for unit testing without the need to call an actual server over the internet.

Chapter 7 then rounds out the book by adding contextual information about the user who’s scanning barcodes. Core Location and iBeacons let you magically adapt your app’s UI to your user’s needs.

Three appendixes provide additional background and other useful information.

This book is written for readers with a working knowledge of Objective-C and iOS app development.