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Data Scanner | Web Document Scanner

The Scanbot SDK provides the ability to perform text recognition directly on the Camera frames. As the result of scanning, the user gets the raw text that was extracted from the frame.

Integrating the Data Scanner UI​

Configuration​

Scanbot SDK Data Scanner takes an instance of TextDataScannerConfiguration as its argument. This is your main object for configuration options, styling and receiving the results.

TextDataScannerConfiguration inherits the base properties:

  • containerId – The id of the containing HTML element where the Data Scanner will be initialized. Required
  • videoConstraints – The desired video resolution. Optional, defaults to 1920x1080
  • mirrored - Whether the screen should be mirrored. Useful when using a user-facing camera. false by default
  • preferredCamera - Camera label or camera device id. If not available, a default camera is used as fallback
  • onError – Callback when something went wrong. Optional

Additionally, Scanbot SDK Data Scanner has the following configurable options:

  • onTextDetected?: (e: TextDataScannerResult) => void – Your callback function for receiving detection results
  • ocrResolutionLimit?: number - The image will be downscaled to the given value during the processing. This variable affects the performance of the scanning process. The higher the size limit - the better the quality, but the recognition is slower. 0 for no rescaling. Optional, 0 by default
  • supportedLanguages?: string[] - Languages against which the recognition will be run. ['eng'] by default
  • validationPattern?: string - Simple validation string pattern. For details, see the API Docs. Optional
  • matchSubstring?: boolean - Controls if validationPattern should match the entire scanned text, or if it should find a matching substring. Optional, false by default
  • allowedCharacters?: string - A string of allowed characters. Optional

The user gets the TextDataScannerResult through onTextDetected callback, that contains the following fields:

text?: string; // Resulting text
confidence?: number; // The confidence value of the recognized text, from low to high, 0 to 1
validated?: boolean; // If true, the scanner captured the same text across multiple frames

Styling​

ViewFinder-based scanners all have the following two top-level configuration properties:

finder?: ViewFinderConfiguration;
userGuidance?: UserGuidanceConfiguration;

finder​

The finder property controls the styling of the background and the hole, and its style property can be of either FinderCorneredStyle or FinderStrokedStyle (defaults to FinderCorneredStyle).

Both of them have the following properties and default values:

/** Color of the viewfinder corner's outlines. @defaultValue "#FFFFFFFF"; */
public strokeColor: string = "#FFFFFFFF";
/** Width of the viewfinder corner's outlines. @defaultValue 3.0; */
public strokeWidth: number = 3.0;
/** Radius of the viewfinder's corners.        @defaultValue 10.0; */
public cornerRadius: number = 10.0;

If you're configuring the scanner from a JSON Object, be sure to include the type name:

finder: {
    style: {
        _type: "FinderStrokedStyle",
    }
},

Your entire finder configutation object might look something like this:

const config = {
    ...
    finder: {
        visible: true,
        style: {
            _type: "FinderStrokedStyle",
            cornerRadius: 50,
            strokeColor: "green",
            strokeWidth: 5,
        },
        aspectRatio: {
            width: 16,
            height: 9,
        },
        overlayColor: "rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)",
    } as ViewFinderConfiguration
};

Alternatively, you can configure the object line-by-line: 

config.finder!.style._type = "FinderStrokedStyle";
config.finder!.style.cornerRadius = 20;
...

userGuidance​

The userGuidance property is for styling the hint text below the finder window and has the following options:

    /** Whether the user guidance is visible. @defaultValue true; */
    public visible: boolean = true;
    /** Title of the user guidance. @defaultValue new StyledText({ "color": "?sbColorOnPrimary" }); */
    public title: StyledText = new StyledText({ "color": "?sbColorOnPrimary" });
    /** Background style used for the user guidance.
     @defaultValue new BackgroundStyle({
        "strokeColor": "#00000000",
        "fillColor": "?sbColorSurfaceLow"
     });
     */
    public background: BackgroundStyle = new BackgroundStyle({ "strokeColor": "#00000000", "fillColor": "?sbColorSurfaceLow" });

Your entire userGuidance configutation object might look something like this:

const config = {
    ...
    userGuidance: {
        visible: true,
        title: {
            text: "Scan item",
            color: "white",
        },
        background: {
            strokeColor: "green",
            fillColor: "rgba(0, 255, 0, 0.2)",
        }
    } as UserGuidanceConfiguration
};

Alternatively, you can also configure the object line-by-line: 

config.userGuidance!.title.text = "Scan item";
config.userGuidance!.title.color = "white";
...

OCR - Optical Character Recognition​

The Scanbot OCR feature is based on the Tesseract OCR engine with some modifications and enhancements.

In webpack-based projects you can import the default Tesseract language packs into the Scanbot SDK bundle as below:

// eslint-disable-next-line import/no-webpack-loader-syntax
require("!!file-loader?outputPath=tessdata&name=[name].[ext]!scanbot-web-sdk/bundle/bin/complete/tessdata/eng.traineddata");
// eslint-disable-next-line import/no-webpack-loader-syntax
require("!!file-loader?outputPath=tessdata&name=[name].[ext]!scanbot-web-sdk/bundle/bin/complete/tessdata/deu.traineddata");

This will ensure that the Tesseract ocr language packs tessdata/deu.traineddata for German and tessdata/eng.traineddata for English are automatically copied over by webpack into the webpack output folder.

You can deploy your custom tesseract language packs and configure supportedLanguages for the Scanbot SDK Data Scanner.

For further details on package installation, visit Adding the Dependency.

Opening the Scanner​

To open the Data Scanner, simply call the relevant SDK function with the configuration object:

const configuration = {
    containerId: DATA_SCANNER_CONTAINER,
    onTextDetected: onTextDetected,
    onError: onError
};

const scanner = await scanbotSDK.createTextDataScanner(configuration);

You should store the Data Scanner object in a globally accessible location, as additional Data Scanner actions are functions of that object.

API​

To handle Data Scanner results, ScanbotSDK offers the following convenient methods to pause and resume detection while you are processing the data on your side:

resumeDetection(): void;
pauseDetection(): void;
isDetectionPaused(): boolean;

Switching between the front and rear camera​

swapCameraFacing(force?: boolean): void;

swapCameraFacing(true) indicates that only the swapped camera (e.g. front camera) is acceptable; if the swapped camera is not available, or the user declines the permission to use that camera, the media request will fail.

danger

Firefox on Android: Due to current Firefox browser limitations, we highly recommend checking the running browser and disabling this feature for Firebox browsers.

Switching to a specific available camera​

fetchAvailableCameras(): Promise<CameraInfo[]>;
switchCamera(deviceId: string, mirrored?: boolean): void;
getActiveCameraInfo(): CameraInfo | undefined;
interface CameraInfo {
    deviceId: string;
    label: string;
    facingMode?: CameraFacingMode;
    supportsTorchControl?: boolean;
}

type CameraFacingMode = 'front' | 'back' | 'unknown';

You can search for available cameras on the running browser by using fetchAvailableCameras method of a scanner. You can retrieve the label, device id and the camera facing mode information of the active camera of a scanner by using getActiveCameraInfo method. And, you can switch to another available camera by utilizing its device id, by using switchCamera method.

const cameras = await scanner.fetchAvailableCameras()
    if (cameras) {
      const currentCameraInfo = scanner.getActiveCameraInfo();
      if (currentCameraInfo) {
        const cameraIndex = cameras.findIndex((cameraInfo) => { return cameraInfo.deviceId == currentCameraInfo.deviceId });
        const newCameraIndex = (cameraIndex + 1) % (cameras.length);

        scanner.switchCamera(cameras[newCameraIndex].deviceId);
      }
    }

Controlling the torch (flashlight)​

On some mobile devices, the browser can control the torch (flashlight). Check scanner.getActiveCameraInfo().supportsTorchControl to see if the browser can control the torch for the currently active camera. If true, you can control the torch by using the setTorchState method of the scanner.

setTorchState(state: boolean): Promise<void>;
info

On Android devices, only Chrome supports torch control. Starting with iOS 17.4, all supported browsers on iOS offer torch control functionality.

Disposal​

As with the other scanners of Scanbot SDK, the Data Scanner should also be properly disposed of when you have detected and processed the relevant text data:

await scanner.dispose();

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