There are lots of different ways to encode data in software. For instance, text encodings such as ASCII or UTF-8 allow us to represent strings of arbitrarily complex characters, while base64 allows us to represent even binary data as text and transmit it over channels that are more suited to deal with text (such as many internet protocols).

Barcodes, on the other hand, allow us to label physical objects and read them efficiently, providing a bridge between software and the physical world.

Although barcodes could represent any data, they are usually used to represent numbers. They are most commonly used in retail for fast processing of items being sold, especially by supermarkets, but also by pharmacies, bookshops, electronics stores, and other shops.

Many items we buy, from everyday groceries to books, are labelled with numbers (which I’ll call “product codes”) that form part of one or more standards, such as EAN-13, UPC-A, or ISBN. These numbers are encoded as a barcode on the product itself or its packaging. Several websites exist where you can look up these numbers. Other products, such as fruit, do not have standard identifiers, but that doesn’t prevent shops from applying their own.

Barcode Scanners

Barcode scanners can be used to read these product codes. They are quite cheap and can connect via USB to any system, making them widely compatible with Windows, Linux, MacOS, and various cash registers. A barcode scanner is held like a gun and, when the trigger is pulled, it emits a red light that reads the information on the barcode. This is immediately written to any text field that currently has focus, followed by a newline. For instance, if I open a text editor and quickly scan the barcodes on the four books shown in the above picture, I get the following:

9780201633542
9780201633467
9780201433074
9780201633610

Scanning these numbers into a text file is useful for testing or to later bulk-process them, but we can also use this handy input method in other ways. For instance, if we open ISBN Search and click on the search field, scanning a book’s barcode will not only populate the search field with the ISBN number, but also execute the search:

Barcodes in Retail

Shops that sell products with barcodes on them can use those barcodes as primary keys to identify each product. This makes it very easy to create a database with information about the various products (including name, price, taxes, discounts, etc) and then have the cashier look this up by just entering the barcode. We can simulate this by writing a simple program, e.g. in Python.

First, we define a simple mapping between each product’s barcode and its price:

from decimal import Decimal

prices = {
    "9780201633542": Decimal(35.75),
    "9780201633467": Decimal(28.90),
    "9780201433074": Decimal(42.30),
    "9780201633610": Decimal(0.50)
} 

Then, we write a simple loop that reads product codes one by one. When an empty input is received, it means there are no more products, and the total price is calculated:

total_price = Decimal(0)

while True:
    product_code = input("Product code: ")

    if product_code == "":
        break
    else:
        price = prices.get(product_code)
        if price == None:
            print('Unknown product code')
        else:
            total_price += price

print(f'Total: {total_price:.2f}')

Running this, we can scan a couple of barcodes and process a sale in a jiffy:

Product code: 9780201633542
Product code: 9780201633467
Product code: 
Total: 64.65

Building a Book Catalogue

Just like a shop can build a database by scanning barcodes and enhancing them with additional information, anyone can. In fact, you can find several online databases where you can look up barcodes, such as the aforementioned ISBN Search, EAN-Search, Barcode Lookup, and others. Some even offer APIs so that you can automate the lookup and build a fully-featured database very quickly by just scanning a bunch of barcodes.

If you run a library or are just a private individual with a lot of books, you can use this approach to build a catalogue of your books. The easiest way is to use the Handy Library mobile app, which allows you to scan a book’s ISBN number and through it acquire all the book’s metadata too. If you prefer to have your data on a computer, you can export data from Handy Library, or else build your database yourself by scanning barcodes and looking up the information afterwards.

QR Codes

Barcodes may be great in retail, but most people don’t carry barcode scanners with them wherever they go. Now that everybody and his dog has a smartphone with a powerful camera, QR codes have emerged as a more recent standard to encode data that smartphones can easily scan with their default camera app. The most common use case is to encode a URL, allowing people to visit it by scanning it with their phone’s camera rather than typing it in. The following are a few creative uses I’ve come across in my travels:

• Exhibitions: putting a QR code beside the label of an exhibit in an art gallery or museum allows people to scan it and visit a webpage with more information. It’s also possible to have this for multiple languages.
• Paying bills: in Switzerland, the new standard way of paying bills is to scan a QR code containing all payment details with a bank’s mobile app.
• Contact details: A long time ago, I had an idea that people could easily exchange contact details by scanning a QR code. Someone has probably done this already. Similar applications I’ve seen in the wild are physical business cards with QR codes that lead to the company or owner’s website, and the LinkedIn app which displays a QR code leading to the user’s profile.
• Queue ticket info: when you take a ticket and wait your turn in some customer service departments, the ticket contains a QR code that tells you how many people are ahead of you and how long you can expect to wait. You could potentially run a quick errand and keep track of your place while you’re away.
• Two-Factor Authentication: QR codes are the easiest way to initially exchange the secret in Time-Based One-Time Passwords (TOTP), as shown in “Using Time-Based One-Time Passwords for Two-Factor Authentication“.

Conclusion

Nowadays, we talk a lot about artificial intelligence, augmented reality, robotics the internet of things, and so on. Many of these fields are awe-inspiring, yet not very accessible to the man in the street.

On the other hand, barcodes have provided a very simple way for software to interact with physical objects for decades. The advantages in efficiency are hard to dispute, as can be seen in the retail industry.

The ubiquity of smartphones and the more recent widespread use of QR codes has enabled the same concept to extend to a lot of other use cases, allowing us to interact with some very traditional settings in novel ways.