How to Scan Barcodes in a Glide App

Glide is a no-code app builder which makes it easy to create apps.

Dynamsoft is a partner of Glide to provide it with the barcode scanning feature based on its barcode reading SDK.

In this article, we are going to use Glide to create a demo app which scans barcodes.

Demo video:

In the video, the app scans the ISBN barcodes of books and calculates the total count and total price of books.

Requirements

In order to use Dynamsoft Barcode Reader in Glide. There are two requirements.

  1. A business or enterprise plan.
  2. A license of Dynamsoft Barcode Reader (JavaScript Edition). You have to apply for a license here and ask Glide’s support team to set the license up. (No longer needed since 2023.10.18. Check out Glide’s Docs)

New Glide App

  1. Open Glide and create a new project for mobile.

    New project

  2. Choose “Glide Tables” as the data source.

    Data source

New Table

Create a new table with three columns: barcode, inputter and date.

New table

We are going to log barcodes into this table.

New Screen

Remove existing screens and add a new screen from the table we just created.

New screen

Choose “list” as its collection’s style and do not display the image.

Update style

Update Input Form

Click the add button on the upper-right corner to show the input form.

Input form

Remove the text entries for inputter and date and use the date from special values and the email from user profile values to automatically add the two values.

Input form after

Add a Scan Barcode Button

In the input form, add a button to call the scan barcode action.

Scan barcode button

When the button is clicked, it will call the barcode scanner and save the detected barcode to the barcode column.

Use Computed Columns to Add Extra Features

We can use computed columns to make the app more useful.

  1. Create a new Books table which contains a list of ISBN barcodes of books with their price info.

    Books table

  2. In the Barcodes table, create a new computed column whose type is “relation” to match the row in the Books table by the barcode.

    Relation column

  3. In the Barcodes table, create a new computed column whose type is “lookup” to look up the price info.

    Lookup column

  4. In the Barcodes table, create a new computed column whose type is “rollup” to calculate the total price.

    Sum column

  5. In the Barcodes table, create a new computed column whose type is “rollup” to calculate the total number of barcodes.

    Count column

  6. In the screen, add fields to display the total price and barcode count.

    Fields

Online Demo

Check out the online demo to have a try.