How to integrate a scanner to rails application

Rails
1

Hi,

I have a requirement of integrating a scanner with my application.

I found some interface called TWAIN to scan a file and communicate with
my application.

Any other way is there to integrate our rails applications and Scanner…

Thanks,
Ratnavel

2

On 04 Apr 2008, at 13:41, Ratnavel S. wrote:

I have a requirement of integrating a scanner with my application.

I found some interface called TWAIN to scan a file and communicate
with
my application.

TWAIN is just an image capture API that allows applications to
interface with scanners in a uniform way. Browsers don’t have TWAIN
integration.

Any other way is there to integrate our rails applications and
Scanner…

Integrating a scanner with a web application (being hosted on a
centralized server) is not the same as with a desktop application.
There are two possible options that are truly crossbrowser and
crossplatform IMHO:

  • Let the user use his own scanner software scan in the document, save
    it as an image on his local desktop and then upload it using a form to
    store it in the application. This is going to be the easiest way to
    integrate scanning into your web app and the scanner is going to be
    very cheap
  • Buy one of those expensive scanners with built-in WebDAV, SMB
    networking or FTP capabilities and make it upload all scans into some
    directory on the web application server. Then have a cron tab or
    backgroundrb process periodically scan the folder for new files,
    import those into your Rails application and database (for example in
    an “inbox”), ready for sorting.

Best regards

Peter De Berdt

3

You can use a java plugin just for the scanning page.