Add the SDK to Your App

This guide shows you how to add the Scandit Data Capture SDK to current existing project.

Prerequisites

  • The latest stable version of Cordova, Node.js and npm.

  • A project with minimum iOS deployment target of 11.0 or higher. Or an Android project with target SDK version 23 (Android 6, Marshmallow) or higher.

  • A valid Scandit Data Capture SDK license key. You can sign up for a free test account at ssl.scandit.com.

Note

Android devices running the Scandit Data Capture SDK need to have a GPU or the performance will drastically decrease.

Get a License Key

  1. If you don’t have a Scandit account yet, create a free test account at ssl.scandit.com.

  2. Sign in to your account at ssl.scandit.com/sessions/new.

  3. Select “License Keys” from the left-hand menu.

  4. If you don’t have a license key for your app yet, click “Create native SDK license key” and enter the bundle ID for your project.

  5. Copy the license key.

If you have a paid subscription, please reach out to support@scandit.com if you need a new license key.

Add the SDK

Currently we support adding the Scandit Data Capture SDK Cordova plugins to your project in two ways. The simplest way is to use npm, alternatively you can manually download the plugins and add them to your Cordova project.

Note

You should first always add the scandit-cordova-datacapture-core plugin, as all other plugins depend on it.

Create a new project (optional)

If you do not have a Cordova project yet that you’ll use, you should create a new one.

> cordova create helloscandit --id "com.scandit.helloscandit"
> cd helloscandit
> cordova platform add [ios | android]

Add dependencies

The Scandit Data Capture SDK depends on WKWebView on iOS, so you’ll manually have to add this dependency if your project doesn’t use WKWebView yet.

> cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-wkwebview-engine

Add the Scandit Data Capture SDK via npm or GitHub repo

To add our plugins via npm or git repo, you can run these commands from your project’s root folder. In the following snippet we’re adding ScanditBarcodeCapture API

# npm package
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-core
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-barcode

# git repo
cordova plugin add https://github.com/Scandit/scandit-cordova-datacapture-core.git
cordova plugin add https://github.com/Scandit/scandit-cordova-datacapture-barcode.git

Note

For npm dependencies, you can also specify a version @<version>. For GitHub dependencies, you can also specify the version #<version>.

Add the Scandit Data Capture SDK manually

After you download the archive containing all the plugins at ssl.scandit.com/sdk, unzip the archive. It includes the available Cordova plugins, including the scandit-cordova-datacapture-core plugin that all other plugins depend on.

Add the plugin to your project

Use the Cordova CLI to add the plugin(s) to your already existing project.

First add scandit-cordova-datacapture-core plugin:

cordova plugin add <path to scandit-cordova-datacapture-core plugin>

If your project is not yet configured to use Swift on iOS, you’ll need to add the following line to your config.xml file to specify the Swift version you’d like to use:

<platform name="ios">
  ...
  <preference name="SwiftVersion" value="5" />
  ...
</platform>

Once this is done, you can continue with adding the plugin for your desired functionality, e.g. for barcode capture, add the scandit-cordova-datacapture-barcode plugin:

cordova plugin add <path to scandit-cordova-datacapture-barcode plugin>

To update plugins, make sure to follow Cordova best practices and remove the plugin before adding the new version:

cordova plugin remove <id of the plugin being updated>
cordova plugin add <local path, id or GitHub repo url of the plugin being updated>

Additional Information

  • When using the Scandit Data Capture SDK you will want to set the camera as the frame source for various capture modes. The camera permissions are handled by the plugins, so you don’t need to specify anything explicitly.

Next steps

You are now ready to tackle the following guides: