5.2 Barcode Encodings

Barcodes are always transmitted in a binary format. Because we don't know which encoding your barcode is using, we currently use WINDOWS-1252 as the standard encoding. It includes all ASCII and Western European characters including the € sign.

If your codes have a different encoding, such as UTF-8, you have to decode them yourself or use the built-in library functions to convert the byte array to a string.

We currently support the following encodings:

• WINDOWS-1252
• UTF-8
• ISO-8859-1

You can access the raw byte array like this:

KotlinJava

override fun didScanBarcode(device: NIMMSTADevice, barcode: Barcode, event: ScanEvent) {
    // Both examples are equivalent
    event.encodedBarcode.asWindows1252String()
    event.encodedBarcode.toString(NIMMSTAEncoding.WINDOWS_1252)

    // Both examples are equivalent
    event.encodedBarcode.asUTF8String()
    event.encodedBarcode.toString(NIMMSTAEncoding.UTF_8)

    // Both examples are equivalent
    event.encodedBarcode.toString(NIMMSTAEncoding.WINDOWS_1252)
    event.encodedBarcode.asWindows1252String()

    // Access the underlying byte array
    event.encodedBarcode.byteArray
}

@Override
public void didScanBarcode(NIMMSTADevice nimmstaDevice, Barcode barcode, ScanEvent scanEvent) {
    // Both examples are equivalent
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.asWindows1252String();
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.toString(NIMMSTAEncoding.WINDOWS_1252);

    // Both examples are equivalent
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.asUTF8String();
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.toString(NIMMSTAEncoding.UTF_8);

    // Both examples are equivalent
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.toString(NIMMSTAEncoding.WINDOWS_1252);
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.asWindows1252String();

    // Access the underlying byte array
    scanEvent.encodedBarcode.byteArray;
}

You can change the standard encoding at any time like this:

KotlinJava

// For changing to UTF-8
EncodedMessage.STANDARD_ENCODING = NIMMSTAEncoding.UTF_8

// For changing to UTF-8
EncodedMessage.STANDARD_ENCODING = NIMMSTAEncoding.UTF_8;