1.1. Installing the SDK

These are the basic instructions for obtaining the SDK and adding it to an Xcode project.

You may want to try things out with the ZBar SDK Integration Tutorial before hacking at your own project.

1.1.1. Requirements

You will need all of the following to develop iPhone applications using this SDK:

• Mac OS X >= 10.6.x (Snow Leopard)
• Xcode >= 3.2.3
• iPhone SDK >= 4.0
• An iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4
• iOS >= 3.1 running on the device (>= 4.0 is preferred)

Warning

Only the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 are supported, as they have a camera with auto-focus. The ZBar library does not support the iPhone 3G and is unlikely to ever support it.

1.1.2. Downloading

Download the latest binary release of the ZBar SDK from

http://zbar.sourceforge.net/iphone

1.1.3. Integration

The recommended installation method is to simply copy the SDK into your Xcode project:

1. Open ZBarSDK-1.2.dmg in the Finder.

2. Drag the ZBarSDK folder into your Xcode project. In the dialog that appears, you should choose to copy the SDK into your project by checking the box. The target that you want to link with the library should also be selected in the target list.

3. Link the following additional frameworks to any targets that link with the ZBarSDK. You should set the first three to use weak references and configure an appropriate deployment target if you still need to support iOS 3:

   • AVFoundation.framework (weak)
   • CoreMedia.framework (weak)
   • CoreVideo.framework (weak)
   • QuartzCore.framework
   • libiconv.dylib

   If you check “Link Binary With Libraries” for the target(s), you should see all of these frameworks followed by libzbar.a.

   Note

   Link order may be important for some versions of Xcode; the referenced libraries should be listed before libzbar.a in the link order.

4. Import the SDK header from your prefix header to make the barcode reader APIs available:

   #import "ZBarSDK.h"
   

Proceed to Scanning From the Camera Feed or Scanning a User-Selected Image to learn about using the reader APIs to scan barcodes. Use the API Reference for specific interface details.

1.1.4. Upgrading from an Older Version

If you are using an older version of the SDK (NB, skip to the next section if you are currently using Mercurial), upgrading is straightforward:

1. Delete the current ZBarSDK group from your project. You should choose to delete the files if you copied them into your project.
2. Drag the new ZBarSDK from the DMG into your project.

Clean out and rebuild your project with the new version.

1.1.5. Upgrading a Pre-SDK Integration

If your project was using the library directly from the Mercurial repository, before the SDK was introduced, there are a few incompatibilities that you must resolve in order to upgrade. Don’t worry - all of your source stays the same, you just need to update how the library is included in the project and how the headers are imported.

1.1.5.1. Switching to the Binary Distribution

This approach is recommended - the binary releases provide you with a stable development platform, isolating you from temporary instability and transient problems that may occur at the bleeding edge.

The first task is to reverse the previous ZBar integration:

1. Remove the reference to zbar.xcodeproj from your project.
2. Remove any zbar-* files from your Resources.
3. In the target build settings, remove any “Header Search Paths” that reference zbar.
4. Remove any references to zbar headers in your prefix.pch or source files.

Now just continue with the integration instructions above and you should be back up and running!

1.1.5.2. Continuing with Mercurial

Alternatively, you may still prefer to select Mercurial revisions. You have a few choices for this:

• You may build your own ZBarSDK and copy/link it into your project. This is the same as Switching to the Binary Distribution, except that you use your own version of the SDK. In this case you need to manually rebuild the SDK when you update it.
• You may leave zbar.xcodeproj as a project dependency and pull the SDK into your project. This is not well tested, so ymmv.
• You may leave zbar.xcodeproj as a project dependency and just link libzbar.a into your project, as before. You will need to update the target dependency (the library target changed names to libzbar) and add the iphone/include/ZBarSDK directory to “Header Search Paths”

In any case, you should remove the references to the zbar headers from prefix.pch (or your source files) and replace them with:

#import "ZBarSDK.h"