Hey everyone! I'm trying to figure out how to launch the camera app on a mobile device directly from a web page when a user clicks a button. I'm not looking to capture an image or file input; my goal is just to open the camera for scanning a QR code. Once the QR code is scanned, it should redirect to a new URL. My front-end is using jQuery, and the back-end is C#/ASP.NET (it's an older legacy app). Thanks in advance for any tips!
3 Answers
You might want to check out this link: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/android/intents. It could help you with triggering the camera app directly from your webpage.
I've never used these myself, but maybe take a look at the @zxing/browser or html5-qrcode npm packages. They seem to support live camera scanning, which might be what you need!
You actually don't need to open the system camera app for QR scanning. In certain browsers like Chromium on Android, Chrome OS, and Mac, you can handle QR code scanning directly. Check out the Barcode Detection API documentation here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Barcode_Detection_API. If you're targeting other platforms, consider using a polyfill or library for better compatibility!
That's definitely a smarter way to go! Using a library in combination with the media capture API will ensure more reliability until native support is everywhere.