iOS: As of 2013 what is the best way to scan barcodes and QR codes? [closed]

Question

I'm finding older questions and answers on this topic. But I gather in iOS 7 there is a framework for QR codes. Does it support barcodes too? And if I want to support earlier devices, what is the library that is considered the best as of now?

Answer 1

iOS 7 introduced QR code and Barcode reading support in AVCaptureMetadataOutput. It can read the following formats:

• UPC-A
• UPC-E
• Code 39
• Code 39 mod 43
• Code 93
• Code 128
• EAN-8
• EAN-13
• Aztec
• PDF417
• QR

To implement it you need to add an AVCaptureMetadataOutput with the object types you want to scan for to an AVCaptureSession.

AVCaptureMetadataOutput *metadataOutput= [[AVCaptureMetadataOutput alloc] init];
[self.session addOutput:metadataOutput];
[metadataOutput setMetadataObjectsDelegate:self queue:dispatch_get_main_queue()];
[metadataOutput setMetadataObjectTypes:@[AVMetadataObjectTypeCode128Code]];

And implement the following delegate method:

- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput didOutputMetadataObjects:(NSArray *)metadataObjects fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection

The different metadata objects you can listen for are listed here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/DOCUMENTATION/AVFoundation/Reference/AVMetadataMachineReadableCodeObject_Class/Reference/Reference.html

A popular library for previous versions of iOS was ZBar although I know a lot of users had issues with ZBar when trying to use it with iOS 7. This may have been fixed by now though.

http://zbar.sourceforge.net