Serial to Browser (8)

1 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-26 14:44 ID:nnSI3d8U

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction on a problem.

Basically a client of mine wants to be able to run a check through a scanner and have info like the routing number appear in a form on his system's web interface. The scanner is a MiniMICR made by Magtek, which is connected via serial. Interacting with the scanner itself is very straight-forward, but my problem is getting the data from it into the browser. The client wants this to work with IE and Firefox, on Win 95 through Vista.

I'm not sure how to approach feeding data into browsers like this, so any help would be appreciated.

2 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-26 15:17 ID:Heaven

Implement a keyboard driver, or a browser extension. Neither will work in Win95 through Vista and IE and Firefox, so you'll need to do several different ones.

Perhaps you can figure out a way to inject keyboard events from a normal app, but that's not likely to be very reliable.

3 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-26 20:52 ID:tutmbMQh

You feed data into the browser by URLs, silly.

4 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-26 21:24 ID:Heaven

>>3

I'm pretty sure what >>1 wants is something that fills out forms on a web page when you run things through a scanner.

5 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-27 01:51 ID:Heaven

Perhaps:

Install a mini web server on the client bound to localhost that serves the form page, with a little bit of javascript code to connects to another page on the server, waits for a response, and fills out the form. That way all your hard stuff is in a component you control entirely, and it'd be portable to pretty much any OS.

6 Post deleted.

7 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-27 17:13 ID:nnSI3d8U

I think you should write a client-side listener for the check reader that searches common browsers' cookies for a valid and active one for the site you're sending information to. Then, run an XHR function on the form page at an interval that will grab the data sent from the client app and throw it into the proper field(s).

8 Name: #!/usr/bin/anonymous : 2008-02-27 17:15 ID:nnSI3d8U

(btw, there are multiple people at the nnSI3d8U location... heh)

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