Installation
This guide shows you how to add the Scandit Data Capture SDK to your existing project.
Prerequisites
- The latest stable version of Cordova, Node.js and npm.
- A project with minimum:
- iOS deployment target >=11.0, or
- Android project with target SDK version >=23 (Android 6, Marshmallow)
- A valid Scandit Data Capture SDK license key. You can sign up for a free test account.
Android devices running the Scandit Data Capture SDK need to have a GPU or the performance will drastically decrease.
Get a License Key
If you have a paid subscription, please reach out to Scandit Support 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.
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 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 multiple plugins for different functionalities, but you can add only the ones you need.
# npm package
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-core
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-barcode
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-parser
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-text
cordova plugin add scandit-cordova-datacapture-id
# 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
cordova plugin add https://github.com/Scandit/scandit-cordova-datacapture-parser.git
cordova plugin add https://github.com/Scandit/scandit-cordova-datacapture-text.git
cordova plugin add https://github.com/Scandit/scandit-cordova-datacapture-id.git
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, 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
On Android, the Scandit SDK uses content providers to initialize the scanning capabilities properly. If your own content providers depend on the Scandit SDK, choose an initOrder lower than 10 to make sure the SDK is ready first.
If not specified, initOrder is zero by default and you have nothing to worry about.
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.