You've seen it across the world at every cash register in every store or supermarket out there. Here's how easy it is to build your own with the help of the best form builder in DNN: Action Form
We've had this use case in mind for a while; pretty much since the birth of 1001 things you can do with DNN Sharp tools. What stopped us from doing this video? I wish I could answer that question; it was probably the desire of making it fully functional and yet simple to be implemented; we had to decide what needs to be left out and what not. Well, here it is now, the one and only DNN POS (Point Of Sale) module if I can call it that way.
The tutorial is based on a previously released tutorial, Online store and shopping cart with Action Grid. The database is pretty much identical to the one used in the previous video except for this use case we've added one extra column where we also stored the SKU/Product Code/Unique Identifier/Barcode of each product; this way we will be able to scan the products, get the number behind their barcode and then compare it with what we have in the database.
The entire functionality is based on the Barcode Generator and Scanner add-on which basically allows you to use any device with a camera (imaging device) to scan a barcode:
- either form an image (picture)
- or directly from the camera feed (live video from device's camera)
and then passes the data to Action Form which handles the processing; then, Action grid is the one that beautifully displays data from the shopping cart and sends it for processing/payment.
Of course, you can replace the barcode scanner field with a Standalone Infrared Bracode Scanner device which inserts the result in a textbox but where's the fun in doing something the obvious way? :) The quality of the scan process depends entirely on the image quality so the barcode has to be clear/readable and the scanning device(camera) needs to be able to provide high-quality footage(image/video) in order for the software processor to be able to decode it and transform the image in numbers.
Let us know if you liked the tutorial and don't forget to send us shots of your implementation. We're sure that we showed here is just a very small part of what can be achieved with the DNN Sharp modules.
In case you have a custom project that requires a more complex implementation and you need help with that don't hesitate to contact our Implementations Team to do it for you.