Label Scanner Enhancements: LCSC barcode, create part, augmented scanning

[swdee]

Overview

This PR makes changes to the Label Scanner to enhance its functionality in the following ways.

1. Scan and decode of LCSC.com barcodes
2. Create new parts by scanning vendor barcodes (lcsc, mouser, digikey)
3. Provides an augmented view of decoded barcode

These improvements provide a solution to the open issues #937 #520

It also provides functions for addressing #464

Use Case

In addition to the open Issues above, my use case for these enhancements is as follows.

I have 500+ components and loading them into Part-DB is a difficult and slow task, using the Tools->Create parts from info provider tool is slow to type in the Part numbers, it would be much easier to scan the vendor barcodes to create Parts.

The next problem is the Scanner only loads barcodes of Parts with a Part-DB barcode. It would be a hard task for someone wanting to use or migrate to Part-DB and having to load and print hundreds of labels/stickers for the Scanner to be usable.

Supplier barcodes (lcsc, mouser etc) already have all the necessary information on their labels to make the system work. There is however one important piece missing from the supplier label and that is the Storage Location. By providing an augmented view we can quickly scan the supplier barcode to return the component to its correct Storage location. This avoids the more complicated and current workflow of scanning a barcode, redirecting to the part page, clicking on the Stocks tab, then returning to the scanner page which has to go through the camera initialization routine again.

Demo

The existing function of Scanning parts and redirecting to the Part page has been preserved, to use these new enhancements tick the Info Mode checkbox to activate them.

The following video demonstrates the Augmented view which allows you to scan quickly supplier barcodes to perform part lookup and storage location retreival.

scan-parts-quickly.mp4

In the next video it demonstrates how you can create a new part when it is not found as well as showing support for decoding LCSC, Digikey, and Mouser barcodes.

add-parts-from-scan.mp4

Camera Bugs

Whilst developing these enhancements we have also fixed a number of bugs in the scanner, the CSRF token failure in #1191 and we found in Info Mode the camera would constantly connect and disconnect and sometimes become invisible/broken on view requiring a page reload in the browser.

To fix these we changed the architecure of the Scanner page to perform XHR requests for the barcode decoding, and then on the client side we either redirect to the Parts page to preverse the existing function, or display the decoded and augmented information. This allows us to stay on the Scanner page without causing the QR Code scanner to be constructed and destructed all the time.

As the QR Code scanner is persistently scanning, we also implemented logic to only do an XHR callback when it sees a new barcode to avoid multiple requests of the same barcode to the server. In comparison to the existing/old function which resulted in a reload loop in the browser after we fixed the QR Code scanner construct/destruct issues causing the camera interface to break under undetermined race conditions.

Development Status

This code is not yet ready to be merged, from our side we need;

1. People to test this for any bugs or edge cases we have not come across.

2. We are not sure how the Translation implementation works. For now we edited the translations/messages.en.xlf file and manually inserted our new language units. Would you please advise how we should approach this properly?

3. And of course we need feedback from the maintainers on our code changes.

[swdee]

I have setup a test server instance of Part-DB with these PR changes for end user to try out.

Field	Value
Server URL	https://testing-partdb.bokumail.com
Username	testing
Password	test22

Instructions

Login with the above credentials and click on the Scanner menu option at the top to load the Label Scanner.

Check the Info Mode box and start scanning Barcodes. Currently only LCSC and EIGP (Mouser or Digikey barcodes) are supported for new part creation.

Feedback Request

Please provide feedback on UI usage, bugs, or any problems you experience with these enhancements.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 64.48980% with 87 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 58.34%. Comparing base (766ba07) to head (7336bc8).

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
src/Controller/ScanController.php	49.29%	72 Missing ⚠️
...s/LabelSystem/BarcodeScanner/BarcodeRedirector.php	77.77%	10 Missing ⚠️
...belSystem/BarcodeScanner/LCSCBarcodeScanResult.php	90.00%	5 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff              @@
##             master    #1194      +/-   ##
============================================
+ Coverage     58.23%   58.34%   +0.11%     
- Complexity     7430     7510      +80     
============================================
  Files           582      583       +1     
  Lines         23644    23877     +233     
============================================
+ Hits          13768    13932     +164     
- Misses         9876     9945      +69     

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[jbtronics]

Hey,
thanks for the PR, I think that is some very useful functionality.
I took some very rough look across the code changes (I have not tested it so far), and it looks quite well, I put some smaller remarks on the code, but that is not final yet.

The functionality for handling what should happen for part creation should be extracted to its own service.
If we expect that there will be many different vendor label types to be handled, it might be useful to extract each vendor type into its own handler class, that are then used by their container tag (similar to how the info provider classes or the label placeholders work). But for two different types that is probably not too useful.

[swdee]

The functionality for handling what should happen for part creation should be extracted to its own service.

To confirm what you mean. We should;

1. create src/Services/LabelSystem/BarcodeScanner/PartCreationResolver.php and move from ScanController.php the function buildCreateUrlForScanResult() into the PartCreationResolver.php.

2. create src/Services/LabelSystem/BarcodeScanner/ScanAugmentationService.php and move from ScanController.php the functions buildLocationsForPart() and buildStorageBreadcrumb() into it.

This would then leave ScanController.php with the endpoints for lookup() , dialog(), and scanQRCode.

[lukilukeskywalker]

I just tried it out with a few LCSC components I had lying around, works flawlessly

[swdee]

@jbtronics I will be away from my development environment for a couple of weeks, when I get back I will rebase the code and make any changes you recommend after you have had time to review.

[MayNiklas]

I would love this feature!
I just tried it out and noticed an issue:

While it works flawlessly using my camera, I had issues using my barcode scanner (with the same LCSC bag).
For scanning using a barcode scanner, I click on input and then use my scanner, which basically acts as a keyboard and enters the string.

For debugging, here is my string: {pbn:PICK2506270148,on:GB2506270877,pc:C22437266,pm:IA0509S-2W,qty:3,mc:,cc:1,pdi:164234874,hp:null,wc:ZH}

Having info mode enabled, everything works:

Having info mode disabled, I get a Format unknown error.

This should be reproducible, using my string and the input field.

Still:
I hope this feature is able to make it upstream - I would love that!