200OK Solutions Blog | Insights & Tutorials

What is a Barcode & QR code?

A barcode holds information horizontally, while a QR code (Quick Response) holds information both vertically and horizontally.

To implement a barcode scanner in React Native, you’ll need react-native-vision-camera and react-native-worklets-core. These dependencies utilize MLKit Vision on Android and Apple Vision on iOS.

Install dependencies:

command 1: npm install react-native-vision-camera@3.3.0

command 2: npm install react-native-worklets-core@0.2.2

Add the worklet plugin to your babel.config.js:

module.exports = {
   plugins: [
        ['react-native-worklets-core/plugin']
   ],
}

Configure Permissions

Android: Add the following lines to your AndroidManifest.xml:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.CAMERA" />

iOS: Add the following lines to your Info.plist:

<key>NSCameraUsageDescription</key>
<string>$(PRODUCT_NAME) needs access to your Camera.</string>

Additional Android Setup:

Ensure your build.gradle includes the following configurations:

• Set buildToolsVersion to 33.0.0 or higher

• Set compileSdkVersion to 33 or higher

• Set targetSdkVersion to 33 or higher

• Set minSdkVersion to 26 or higher

• Set ndkVersion to “23.1.7779620” or higher

• Update the Gradle Build-Tools version

In Android Make sure your Gradle Wrapper version is 7.5.1 or higher in gradle-wrapper.properties:

distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-7.5.1-all.zip

Troubleshoot

Use the useCameraDevice hook to access the camera:

Get Device

By using useCameraDevice hook, by passing ‘back’ as a parameter we are able to get the device which is required by camera component.

const device = useCameraDevice('back');

Getting/Requesting Permission

Use the useCameraPermission hook to request camera permissions:

const { hasPermission, requestPermission } = useCameraPermission();

Frame Processors:

Frame processors are functions that process frames the camera “sees”. Use them to call high-performance native functions for specific use cases:

const frameProcessor = useFrameProcessor((frame) => { 
      'worklet'
      const objects = detectObjects(frame)
      console.log(`Detected ${objects.length} objects.`) 
}, [])

CodeScanner

Use the useCodeScanner hook to detect codes in a camera stream:

const codeScanner = useCodeScanner({ 
      codeTypes: ['qr', 'ean-13'], 
      onCodeScanned: (codes) => { 
           console.log(`Scanned ${codes.length} codes!`) 
      } 
})

Scanner Example

Refer to the demo app for a comprehensive example. Check out the sample barcode code-128 and QR code. BarcodeQRScanCode.

QR code

Please check out the demo app for better understanding qrcode_scanner_recording.mp4.