I'm writing an application in Flex to read a serie of digits from a barcode
scanner and submit this to a PHP file in order to recieve a specific records
(in XML) from a MySQL database.

I'm looking for a robust solution to read a serie of digits (e.g. 2837821)
from the keyboard (a barcode scanner just gives keyboard input) in an Flex. I
found the following articles/posts:


http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/communi...etails&postId=
304&productId=2&loc=en_US


http://www.experts-exchange.com/Soft...ics/Macromedia
_Flash/ActionScript/Q_23609017.html

I don't think a timedelay leads to a robust solution; many barcodes must be
read in a batch. There must be a way to read a specified number of digits from
the keyboard, and when this number of digits is reached (7) another function is
executed to check the barcode?

Another way maybe is to wait for an ENTER to be read from the keyboard, when
ENTER is read, the previous serie of keyboard entries is checked.

There must be some experienced Flex/Actionscript coders who can give me some
guidelines in order to get a robust solution for this problem?

Bar code reader, at least the one I am familiar with, send a stream of seven
(7) individual characters in rapid succession. I would assume that you have a
form / TextInput filed to receive the bar code reader's input. If so, you
would make a function that checks the "change" in the text field after each
character arrives and if it is the seventh "valid" digit, make an http request
sending the TextInput field's input data to your php application.

Thank you Greg for your reply.

This will be a solution which is functional and robust, however, for aesthetic
reason I try to avoid a textInput field in the application. I there a way to
use your approach without showing the input field on screen?

Thank you Greg for your reply.

This will be a solution which is functional and robust, however, for aesthetic
reason I try to avoid a textInput field in the application. I there a way to
use your approach without showing the input field on screen?

Make a 'global' listener for the keyboard I suspect.
Look at, save and count contiguous digits.
When you have collected 7 in a row, doSomething() with them and reset the
collector to look for the next bar code.

Greg