Inventory Tracking - Barcode Generator

Hello -

So far the support has been amazing so I thought I would ask one more question. Hikashop is great for ordering but I still need another system for inventory management. Because I don't use Hikashop to sell products, I've heavily modified a few things to work best with what we're using it for.

Attached is a screenshot of what my invoices look like. I need the item number and the quantity only so everything else was removed.

To enter this order into the inventory management system, I have to sit and 10 key it all in. It doesn't take long but if there were bar codes there instead, it would make entering the the orders really fast; they could just be scanned in. First the item and then the quantity; the inventory management system moves on automatically. The attached invoice only has 3 items on it but I could have some long lists to enter.

I'll start the project anyway but has anyone already tried adding bar codes to your invoices? Maybe it's an idea for future Hikashop releases?

I'll probably use this bar code generator and modify it: www.barcodephp.com/download.php

It would be great! I'm a PHP novice so I'll likely destroy this project but it's worth a try. The item code is there already next to the product (well I moved it to its own column but whatever) and if we had an option to add a bar code under each product, the bar code could be the product ID and it could be scanned. I want to take it a step further and have a bar code for the quantity as well.

I think most could agree that it might help reduce order entering mistakes as I assume most users need to have an inventory management system of some kind.

I'm very close to getting this working but I need a hand.

What I have is a custom invoice with the item, the quantity requested and the item code. I want to generate a bar code under the quantity and under the item code.

Here is an example of the system working to generate one single bar code:
[Removed]

I need to dynamically create these bar codes. The image place holder is showing up but the image of the bar code itself is not.

Here is what I changed on invoice.php

 <?php
                  $k=0;
                  foreach($this->order->products as $product){
                    ?>
                     <tr class="row<?php echo $k;?>">
                        <td>
                           <?php echo $product->order_product_name;?>
                        </td>
                        <td>
                        <div align="center"><?php echo $product->order_product_quantity;?><br />
                        <?php

//session_start();

$_SESSION['bdata'] = $product->order_product_quantity;

            echo "<img src='barcode.php?Genrate=Submit&file=&type=png'>";

?></div>
                        </td>
                        <?php if($this->invoice_type=='full'){?>
                        <td>
                        <div align="center"><?php echo $product->order_product_code;?></div>
                        </td>
                        <?php } ?>
                        <td align="center">
                        &nbsp;
                        </td>
                     </tr>
                     <?php
                     $k=1-$k;
                  }
               ?>

It appears that the code I put in may not be showing up correctly. I tried three browsers and go three different results.

Attached is an image of the code I added to invoice.php.

Thanks!

I thought the file was uploaded, apologies.

mydtvhs.com/barcode.txt

There is the text version.

I didn't write it (find solutions before you build them) but I can explain some of the options.

Originally the variables for the bar code were gathered via a $_POST but I knew what I wanted all of them to be so I got rid of everything except what needed to be 'bar codeized' (the product code or quantity).

You can set the scale, the colors, etc but I manually set most of those. Because the image is built using the external file, I thought it was an issue with passing the contents of the variable on to barcode.php. I've tried a DB, session variable, $_POST and $_GET but I still don't know what's wrong.

I'm very new to PHP still so I usually struggle my way through things and manage to figure it out.

As you can see from my original post, I've been working on this for a month.

Anyhow, thanks again for taking a look.

Thanks so much for the help, I can't say it enough.

I made the changes and the index.php test page I'm using to make sure the code still works will still generate a bar code but the invoice is failing.

Any idea where @header("Content-type: image/png"); should be placed for successful images? I tried in the invoice.php file just above the echo but that didn't change anything. I also tried it above $im=@imagecreatetruecolor($total_x, $total_y); at about line 266 but that didn't work. I tried it above $return = $bar->genBarCode($barnumber,png,''); at line 338 and nothing changed.

Ultimately this isn't an issue with Hikashop so I understand if you don't have another suggestion. I'm grateful for what I got. :0)

--Joel

The library appears to work correctly:

[Removed]

If I print this page and scan it to a text file, the scanner reads it ok.

I'll continue to look at it some more.

Thanks again! :0)

And it worked and is now showing the bar codes on the invoices.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have to change the height and a few minor things but I'm sure I can manage that. I also need to make sure it's generating the bar code correctly so the scanner can read it but it's nearly there.

--Joel

for inventory manegenment, barcode generator is a necessity when you want to enter number and quality of the product. it iwll make you save a lot of time. so i have been searching for such tool/. here is what i find about tutorial to bar tutorial to barcode generator . take a look.

Jerome wrote: Hi,

Thanks for the link but unfortunately it couldn't help because it's a c# library, not a PHP one.
But, since the creation of this thread 2 years ago, we have made some improvements and some new tools.

HikaSerial embedded a barcode generator and a QRcode generator. His library could be use for the generation of such images with a little development.

Regards,