How to integrate a scanner to rails application

[Ratnavel Sundaramurthi]

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
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[Peter De Berdt]

On 04 Apr 2008, at 13:41, Ratnavel Sundaramurthi 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

[Philip J B.]

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