When scanning conventional linear barcodes, the data contained in each symbol typically represents one field in a data collection program. For example, a barcode may contain an Order ID or a Part Number. Generally these barcodes do not contain multiple fields of information.
2-D barcodes, however, can contain a larger amount of data, including multiple fields. An example of this would be a shipping symbol that contains the full address of the receiver, separated by a delimiter character.
When scanning a 2-D symbol like this, it is often required to parse the individual fields from the data and display or store them separately. This can lead to a problem when designing the program in ITScriptNet. To scan the data, there must be an Input field in the program which is configured for scanning the 2-D symbol, and which is long enough to contain the full length of the data in the symbol. The maximum length of a single field in ITScriptNet is 999 characters. However, the maximum length of a collected data record is also roughly 1000 characters, and this input field will be stored in the collected data. This leads to two problems.
1) It is inefficient, as the program is storing both the raw symbol and the parsed fields as separate collected data fields.
2) The total length of a collected data record should not exceed 1000 characters.
How can this type of problem be addressed?
It is possible to create an Input field in ITScriptNet that is not saved into the collected data record by setting the Maximum Length to 0. Normally, this results in a field which can not collect any data. By using the In-Prompt Script for the Maximum Length property to override the length at runtime, the ITScriptNet client will allow data to be collected for the field. When the data for the record is saved, the original size is always used, so no data will be stored in the collected data record. This results in a field which can scan a barcode up to 999 characters, but does not save the data. In-Prompt Scripts can be used to parse this scanned data and place the information that is needed in other input fields to be saved.