Advanced Topics

This section covers additional topics regarding the Anyline Cordova Plugin. You will not require knowledge about these advanced topics in your everyday use of the SDK. However, in case you need specific information about certain topics in the Anyline SDK, it will be covered here.

UI Configuration

The Anyline Cordova plugin offers you a way to optionally introduce some basic UI controls to your scan view, which can improve scanning experience.

To add these controls to your scan view, you can define an options node into the root of your JSON configuration containing instructions on how these controls appear. An example with the Done Button on iOS:

Configuring a Done button and a scanMode segment control
{
    "licenseKey": "YOUR_LICENSE_KEY",
    "options": {
        "doneButtonConfig": {
            "offset.y": -88
        },
        "segmentConfig": {
            "titles": ["Universal", "DOT", "DOT-Strict"],
            "modes": ["UNIVERSAL", "DOT", "DOT_STRICT"],
            "offset.y": -24
        }
    },
    "viewPluginConfig": {
        "pluginConfig": {
            "id": "TIRE",
            "cancelOnResult": true,
            "tinConfig": {
                "scanMode": "UNIVERSAL"
            }
        }
    }
}

iOS UI elements

The following controls are available on iOS: Done Button, Segment Control, and Label.

Done Button

The Done button is a button that dismisses the scan view screen when pressed. The button is present even when not explicitly included in the configuration. However, you can modify its appearance further by specifying a few properties (i.e. doneButtonConfig) in your config:

Key Value

title

The text displayed for the button

textColor

A hex string denoting the color of the button title

textColorHighlighted

A hex string denoting the color used by the button title when pressed

fontSize

Size of the button title

fontName

Name of the font (note: the font must be available for the device)

positionXAlignment

Should be "LEFT", "RIGHT", or "CENTER" (the default), defining preset locations for the button along the x-axis.

positionYAlignment

Should be "TOP", "CENTER", or "BOTTOM" (the default), defining preset locations for the button along the y-axis.

backgroundColor

A hex string indicating the color of the button background. The default is empty (clear color).

type

Indicate whether the button should fill the width of the screen ("FULLWIDTH"), or simply fit the button text ("RECT", the default)

cornerRadius

Float indicating the corner rounding of the Done button. Default 0.

offset.x

Float value further adjusting the (x-)position of the button

offset.y

Float value further adjusting the (y-)position of the button

Segment Control

If the plugin has support for different scan modes (currently, this is the case only for the following plugins: meter, license plate, OCR, container, and TIN), you can add a segment control that allows you to easily switch between said scan modes by adding a segmentConfig node to options.

If it appears, the segment control will by default be located at the bottom of the scan view, and centered horizontally within it.

The control is only added if the config meets the following requirements:

  1. the plugin’s config object has a scanMode property,

  2. the JSON option configuration has a properly-defined segmentConfig node,

  3. each constant in the modes list matches a scan mode valid for the plugin being used, and

  4. the titles strings array match the modes array in length.

Please check Plugin Configuration Parameters for more information.
Key Value

modes

an array of scan mode strings (that are valid for the plugin) in this configuration

titles

an array of user visible strings corresponding to the modes list.

tintColor

a color, denoted by a hex string, applied to the segment control (at least on iOS)

offset.x

Float value further adjusting the (x-)position of the segment control

offset.y

Float value further adjusting the (y-)position of the segment control

Label

Finally, a static text label can be added to the scan view (useful when positioned next to the scan cutout, as a guide). Configure it with the labelConfig node.

The label is only shown when configured. By default, if it is displayed, it appears directly above the cutout box in the scan view.
Key Value

text

the text to display

color

a hex string denoting the color the label is to be displayed in

size

the font size of the label

offset.x

Float value further adjusting the (x-)position of the label

offset.y

Float value further adjusting the (y-)position of the label

Android UI elements

The following controls are available on Android: Default Orientation and Rotate Button.

Default Orientation

You can specify the default orientation that the scan screen should have when entering the screen. During the scan process you can only change the orientation, if you also added the Rotate Button to the JSON config.

Key Value

defaultOrientation

The orientation of the screen, either portrait or landscape

Rotate Button

The rotate button allows you to switch the orientation of the scan screen from portrait to landscape and vice versa.

Key Value

alignment

Positioning of the button on the scan screen (one of top_right, top_left, bottom_right, or bottom_left).

offset.x

Integer value further adjusting the (x-)position of the rotate button

offset.y

Integer value further adjusting the (y-)position of the rotate button

NFC Passport Reading Support for iOS

For now, our NFC scanning functionality is only currently available for iOS (Android support will be added in the future). In addition, a minimum version of iOS 13 is required.

If you would like to use the MRZ+NFC use case, make sure to configure an MRZ plugin and set the enableNFCWithMRZ option flag to true, as follows:

Add this to your config JSON to scan MRZ+NFC
"options": {
    "enableNFCWithMRZ": true
},
"viewPluginConfig": {
    "pluginConfig": {
        "id": "ID_NFC",
        "mrzConfig": {
            "strictMode": false
        }
    }
}

Besides the scan plugin config, you also have to add the following items to your app project’s info.plist file (these are required in order to tell the OS that the app can be allowed to access NFC functionality):

Key Value

Privacy - NFC Scan Usage Description

A non-empty string describing how the app is using NFC, to be presented to the user as a prompt (e.g. "Please allow NFC access to read passports")

ISO7816 application identifiers for NFC Tag Reader Session

The list should include the string A0000002471001

Finally, the "Near Field Communication Tag Reading" capability must also be added in the Xcode project’s Signing & Capabilities tab. The supported NFC reader formats should include TAG and NDEF.

To accomplish this in Cordova, make sure the following platform config nodes are included in your application’s config.xml, for example:

<platform name="ios">
    <config-file parent="NFCReaderUsageDescription" target="*-Info.plist">
        <string>Please allow NFC access to read passports</string>
    </config-file>
    <config-file parent="com.apple.developer.nfc.readersession.iso7816.select-identifiers" target="*-Info.plist">
        <array>
            <string>A0000002471001</string>
        </array>
    </config-file>
    <config-file parent="com.apple.developer.nfc.readersession.formats" target="Entitlements-*.plist">
        <array>
            <string>NDEF</string>
            <string>TAG</string>
        </array>
    </config-file>
    ...
</platform>

NFC Result

Passport details from the NFC scan will be included as part of the scan results returned in JSON, into the dataGroup1 node, the value of which is another JSON string consisting of the passport fields, and an sod group, which can contain any additional passport metadata found.

Native barcode support

Native barcode detection can be enabled to run alongside an Anyline plugin, using the underlying platform’s barcode detection library. When a supported barcode is found, it will be returned alongside the Anyline plugin results.

A use case might be a Meter plugin that is configured to also look for common barcode formats associated with meter devices.

To enable native barcode support, add a nativeBarcodeScanningFormats property to your config’s option node and list down the barcode formats that you would like to scan. Possible barcode format strings can found from the list of constants here.

Take note that simply because a constant exists for a barcode format in that list doesn’t imply that the device necessarily supports it. Commonly-supported types include: CODE_128, CODE_39, QR_CODE, AZTEC, DATA_MATRIX, PDF_417, UPC_E, CODABAR, EAN_13, EAN_8, and MICRO_QR.
Configuration JSON with native barcode formats specified
{
    "licenseKey": "...",
    "options": {
        "nativeBarcodeScanningFormats": [ "AZTEC", "PDF417", "QRCODE" ],
    },
    "viewPluginConfig": {
        ...
    }
}

When the scan results are returned, the JSON string will include the node nativeBarcodesDetected:

An example result JSON with native barcodes detected
{
    "meterResult": ...,
    "nativeBarcodesDetected": {
        [
            { "result": 480223447, "barcodeType": org.iso.Aztec }
        ]
    }
}

At the moment, native barcode scanning has a number of limitations :

  • You can only add native barcode scanning as part of an Anyline plugin configuration. Any native barcodes detected will be shown only when the main Anyline plugin has returned a result.

  • There is no feedback to let the user know that a barcode has been detected in this way.

  • Only the last native barcode result detected will be reported in the result screen.

  • As previously mentioned, some barcode formats may not be supported by the mobile platform running it.

  • The results are provided on a "best-effort" basis. Anyline does not guarantee the correctness or accuracy of the results returned from native barcode detection.

If the limitations make it hard to implement your use case, consider using the Anyline Barcode plugin, and potentially in a parallel composite setup together with another plugin.

Reducing SDK size

With the Anyline SDK integrated into your app, it is still possible to cut down on the total installable app size by identifying your Anyline use case, and using this to further optimize the app bundle delivered to users. An Anyline SDK bundle comes trained models for all supported use cases, a number of which your application may not require, and hence could be excluded from your build process.

These are the modules you will need for each technical capability:

Technical capability Module

VIN

module_anyline_ocr

Container

module_anyline_ocr

OCR

module_anyline_ocr

Barcode

module_barcode

Meter

module_energy

MRZ

module_id

Universal ID

module_id

Japanese Landing Permission

module_id

License Plate

module_license_plate

TIN

module_tire

Commercial Tire ID

module_tire

Tire Size

module_tire

Now, after determining which scanning use cases your application needs, prepare a list of the corresponding modules as shown on the table above. Then, add the following preference entry to your app’s config.xml file:

<preference name="anyline-retain-assets-pattern" value="" />

To this preference’s value, give it a colon-separated list of module_* identifiers representing the Anyline modules which you would like to keep (the rest will be removed when the Cordova application is built).

For example, if you want to only use barcode and ID-related plugins in Anyline, set the following preference:

<preference name="anyline-retain-assets-pattern" value="module_barcode:module_id" />

After making the changes, make sure to remove and then to re-add the plugin (i.e., using the Cordova CLI) in order for the changes to apply. Afterwards, building the application removes the unused assets resulting in a potentially-significant reduction in app size.

By default, when anyline-retain-assets-pattern is unspecified, all modules are available. When set, assets for the modules not explicitly listed would be removed, and their corresponding plugins unusable in the application.

This preference is also implemented for the include demo app (see example/config.xml).

Custom model files for OCR

Certain specialized use cases may call for "custom" model files to be used with the Anyline OCR plugin. These model files are specifically designed to allow for scanning of non-standard products: labels on bottlecaps, cattle tags, or voucher codes, to give a few examples.

To make use of these model files for your OCR scanning workflow, these would have to be added to the application binary to make them accessible to Anyline. To accomplish this in Cordova, copy the model files (which typically come with the .ale file extension) to the www/assets/ directory.

Afterwards, your JSON configuration should reference said model files by their names.

JSON Configuration

Now, in order for the OCR plugin to use this file, explicitly reference the name of the file in the customCmdFile property of the ocrConfig:

Using cow_tag_scanner.ale in a custom OCR scan
"viewPluginConfig": {
  "pluginConfig": {
    "id": "cow-tag",
    "ocrConfig": {
      "customCmdFile": "cow_tag_scanner.ale"
    }
  }
}

If an .any file is also included as part of the custom CMD package, add it to the application in the same manner, and also provide its name through the model property within ocrConfig.

Questions or need further assistance? Reach us at [email protected].