Simple iOS app showing the use of Capture SDK.

When using/installing CocoaPods in a new project, the project workspace file should be used instead of the project file.

The Socket Mobile Bluetooth barcode scanners use the External Accessory Framework.

It is very important to make sure your application info plist file contains the supported external accessory protocol string array com.socketmobile.chs.

The previous version of iOS used to give an error message in the traces when a barcode scanner connects to the iOS device and the protocol string was omitted, but that is no longer the case with the most recent version of iOS.

Adding the external accessory protocol string to your application will require your application to be whitelisted with Socket Mobile before submission to the App Store.

Make sure to contact Socket Mobile in order to whitelist your application. You can submit your app to be whitelisted in the Socket Mobile Developer portal.

NOTE The Socket Mobile RFID Reader/Writer uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and does not require or use External Accessory Framework, therefore it is not necessary when supporting only the Socket Mobile RFID Reader/Writer to add the com.socketmobile.chs in the supported external accessory protocol string.

The Capture SDK uses CocoaPods. If it needs to be installed, please check the CocoaPods website for the most current instructions.

The Socket Mobile Capture SDK is required in order to compile this sample.

The Capture SDK documentation can be found here.

The following steps show how to get and build this project.

Open a Terminal window and clone the project: git clone https://github.com/SocketMobile/capturesingleentryswift-ios.git && cd capturesingleentryswift-ios

Then install Socket Mobile Capture SDK: pod install

Last, open the SingleEntry Xcode workspace file: open SingleEntrySwift.xcworkspace

It is important to load the SingleEntrySwift workspace (NOT PROJECT) in Xcode and compile and run.

Build and run the application on a device in order to test with a Socket Mobile device.

There are 2 Capture Cocoapods that are provided. For a Swift project, it is better to use SKTCapture which has the CaptureHelper class written directly in Swift.

The second Capture CocoaPods, SKTCaptureObjC has CaptureHelper written in Objective-C.

Since cocoapods version 1.5.0 and Xcode 9, use_frameworks is no longer necessary.

In this configuration the source files using Capture should include a import SKTCapture at the beginning of the source file. There is no need of a Bridging Header file.

Here is an example of such Podfile:

def import_pods
  pod 'SKTCapture', '~> 1.1'
end

platform :ios, '8.0'
target 'SingleEntrySwift'
import_pods

The source file using CaptureHelper could look like this:

import UIKit
import SKTCapture

class DetailViewController: UIViewController,
  CaptureHelperDevicePresenceDelegate,
  CaptureHelperDeviceDecodedDataDelegate {
    let noScannerConnected = "No scanner connected"
    var scanners : [NSString] = []  // keep a list of scanners to display in the status
    var softScanner : CaptureHelperDevice?  // keep a reference on the SoftScan Scanner

...

In Xcode the debug information format in the build options is set by default to 'DWARF with DSYM file'. This is causing numerous warnings. It is recommended to set it back to 'DWARF' instead.

The home view shows a list view with just one item: SingleEntry.

This view serves just as a demo of an application with multiple views. This view is aware about Capture, but does really nothing when a Socket Mobile device connects or scans a barcode.

The main view shows the connection status, an edit box that receives the decoded data and a "settings" link to display the settings view.

When a scanner is connected, its friendly name appears in the status.

The settings view displays the Capture version, two switches to turn on or off the SoftScan feature and the D600 support. The done link closes this view to go back to the main view.

SingleEntrySwift displays a scanner connection status. When a scanner is connected, its friendly name is displayed. The edit box receives the decoded data from the scanner.

Since the Capture Helper is written in Swift it can be used directly in a Swift project.

To use it in the source code, a simple import SKTCapture is required at the beginning of the file.

In this simple example the CaptureHelper is "attached" to the main view controller.

This main view controller derives from the CaptureHelperDevicePresenceDelegate, CaptureHelperDeviceDecodedDataDelegate, CaptureHelperErrorDelegate and CaptureHelperDevicePowerDelegate protocol and implements their respective delegate methods.

As a showcase, this sample application shows the CaptureHelper shared instance feature.

The purpose of this feature is to share CaptureHelper across the view hierarchy without the need to pass between the views an explicit reference to CaptureHelper.

When a view using CaptureHelper is active, it pushes its delegate using the CaptureHelper pushDelegate method which makes this view active to receive notifications from CaptureHelper.

The first notification the view might receive could be didNotifyArrivalForDevice, when a Socket Mobile device is already connected to the host, even though other views may have already received this notification.

Once the view becomes inactive, then it should call the CaptureHelper popDelegate to remove itself from receiving notification.

At this point, the prior view, if it exists, that had pushed its delegate becomes the one receiving the notifications.

The viewDidLoad handler opens CaptureHelper just after pushing its own reference as the delegate requiring the MainViewController to derive from one the CaptureHelperDelegate protocol. There is a bunch of protocols to choose from depending on what Capture notifications the application is interested.

This is the fist method to call in order to be able to use Capture.

The application information should be set accordingly to the information provided during the application registration in the Socket Mobile developer portal.

This method must be called only once in the entire application.

The completion handler confirms if Capture has been opened successfully. Bear in mind that the open is an asynchronous method, it will return right away.

NOTE: It is not recommended to close Capture because this forces Capture to reinitialize the Socket Mobile device the next time the application opens Capture. Closing Capture does not save more power and if the application does not want to receive any events from Capture, it can just call popDelegate method as explained above.

This CaptureHelperDevicePresenceDelegate method is called when a scanner is successfully detected by the host. The scanner can be SoftScan or any other Socket Mobile scanners supported by Capture.

This CaptureHelperDevicePresenceDelegate method is called when a scanner is no longer available (disconnected).

This CaptureHelperDeviceDecodedDataDelegate method is called when a barcode has been successfully decoded by the scanner.

CaptureHelper is provided as source code. It provides a set of very basic features like enabling disabling barcode symbologies.

If a needed feature is not implemented by CaptureHelper, the recommendation is to create a CaptureHelper extension and copy paste a feature similar from CaptureHelper class to the extended one.

Following this recommendation will prevent to lose the modifications at the next update of the Capture CocoaPods.

An example of this CaptureHelper extension is shown in the CaptureHelperExtension.swift

For some applications it might be required to check the decoded data before letting the user scan more barcodes. This feature is shown with the code enclosed in #if HOST_ACKNOWLEDGMENT statement.

To activate this feature go to the project settings and in the "Other Swift Flags" rename this "-DNO_HOST_ACKNOWLEDGMENT" to this "-DHOST_ACKNOWLEDGMENT".