QuaggaJS is a barcode-scanner entirely written in JavaScript supporting real-time localization and decoding of
various types of barcodes such as EAN and CODE128. The library is also capable of using getUserMedia
to get direct
access to the user's camera stream. Although the code relies on heavy image-processing even recent smartphones are
capable of locating and decoding barcodes in real-time.
Try some examples and check out the blog post (How barcode-localization works in QuaggaJS) if you want to dive deeper into this topic.
This is not yet another port of the great zxing library, but more of an extension to it. This implementation features a barcode locator which is capable of finding a barcode-like pattern in an image resulting in an estimated bounding box including the rotation. Simply speaking, this reader is invariant to scale and rotation, whereas other libraries require the barcode to be aligned with the viewport.
In order to take full advantage of quaggaJS, the browser needs to support the getUserMedia
API which is
already implemented in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome and Opera. The API is also available on their
mobile counterparts installed on Android. Safari and IE do not allow the access to the camera yet, neither
on desktop, nor on mobile. You can check caniuse for updates.
In cases where real-time decoding is not needed, or the platform does not support getUserMedia
QuaggaJS is
also capable of decoding image-files using the File API or other URL sources.
Just clone the repository and include dist/quagga.js
in your project. You can also build the library yourself
by simply typing:
> npm install
> grunt
You can check out the examples to get an idea of how to use QuaggaJS. Basically the library exposes the following API:
This method initializes the library for a given configuration (see below) and a function which is called when the loading-process has finished. The initialization process also requests for camera access if real-time detection is configured.
When the library is initialized, the start()
method starts the video-stream and begins locating and decoding
the images.
If the decoder is currently running, after calling stop()
the decoder does not process any more images.
Registeres a callback function which is triggered whenever a barcode-pattern has been located and decoded successfully. The callback function is called with the decoded data as the first parameter.
In contrast to the calls described above, this method does not rely on getUserMedia
and operates on a
single image instead. The provided callback is the same as in onDetected
and contains the decoded data
as first parameter.
The default config
object is set as followed:
{
inputStream: { name: "Live",
type: "LiveStream"
},
tracking: false,
debug: false,
controls: false,
locate: true,
visual: {
show: true
},
decoder:{
drawBoundingBox: true,
showFrequency: false,
drawScanline: true,
showPattern: false,
readers: [
'code_128_reader'
]
},
locator: {
showCanvas: false,
showPatches: false,
showFoundPatches: false,
showSkeleton: false,
showLabels: false,
showPatchLabels: false,
showRemainingPatchLabels: false,
boxFromPatches: {
showTransformed: false,
showTransformedBox: false,
showBB: false
}
}
}
The following example takes an image src
as input and prints the result on the console.
The decoder is configured to detect Code128 barcodes and enables the locating-mechanism for more robust results.
Quagga.decodeSingle({
readers: ['code_128_reader'],
locate: true, // try to locate the barcode in the image
src: '/test/fixtures/code_128/image-001.jpg' // or 'data:image/jpg;base64,' + data
}, function(result){
console.log(result);
});