Thanks to Edward Spelt and his Delphi library (that I would suggest to be added here) we all can benefit and easily build barcode-enabled multi-platform applications with Delphi! Net C#, php, Objective-C, python, JavaScript and … Delphi! 🙂 ).

The ZXing project is the most popular open source barcode scanning library in Java and has been ported to different languages (C++. So I decided to build this FMX application trying to provide a tangible example about how to structure a simple Delphi mobile app that access sensors (camera can be considered a sensor), stores values and present them to the user through a minimal UI.

if the barcode recognition library is written 100% Delphi code, you achieve a great portability of your app through different platforms (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux!).

it gives you full control on all details of the scanning phase: you can provide a bitmap to the library and ask for a search of desired code types so you may want to get a frame from a camera (deciding resolution if you care), add some pre-processing if needed and get some additional informations about the result, like the exact position of the found code in the bitmap.

it does not create a dependency with a third party app (or/and the way to communicate with it).

This time I tried to have more control and decided to integrate a library for QR code recognition directly into my FMX app.

I already covered this argument on my blog, at XE5 time and later with XE7, but with a different approach: launch a third-party barcode scanner app and get results through clipboards or Android intent infrastructure. While preparing material for the last Delphi mobile training course I gave, I received questions about building a solution to read barcodes / QR codes in a Delphi mobile app. QR codes (barcodes, in general) are really handy when you need to join the physical world with the digital one, simply put a QR code on an item or in a physical place and that item/place is now digitally tagged (and you can take advantage of this in your applications). Sometimes, a video is better than a thousand words: here it is a 45 seconds video showcasing ScannerMApp 🙂

Mac barcode scanner using camera