Stuart Turner

I recently did a project where I needed to print barcodes. I hadn't done anything like that before and it terrified me in the begining.

Rest assured, there is not a lot to worry about once you get under the hood.

My application was to scan tickets as people went ice skating so that we knew that they were valid for the session. See Bath on ice, Cambridge on ice, Leiecester on ice and Bristol on ice.

We used a barcode format called Code128. There is a clever bit of software out there that is easy to integrate with php. There is also a test page so you can see what the bar codes will look like.

One other gotcha - start your number sequence for the bar code with at least three digits. One or two digit barcodes generated as code128 will not scan with your scanner!!! BEWARE!!!

Which scanner - we opted for the Metrologic MK9540-37A38 with codegate. You can purchase on-line here.

The Metrologic scans code128 out of the box and can be mounted on a stand for hands free operation. Simply plug the usb cable in to your computer and the bar code scanner sends the barcode letters / digits followed by the enter key to the currently active window as if you were typing on your keyboard - no drivers to install, nothing special in your software required.

We confiogured our software so the "Check" button was activated on the enter key, that way the person letting people in to the rinks would simply scan and the form would submit with no further action necessary.