What is EAN-13?
With the emergence of Barcodes, companies and businesses began to adopt this new system, which brought significant advantages, as it allows storing different information that can be read at high speed using a laser scanner. However, as new needs arose, Barcodes began to diversify, and several types exist today.
One of them is the EAN or EAN13 Code, which refers to the European Article Number. Unlike the UPC standard, which uses 12 digits, this system uses 13 digits and can currently be found on any product. This code is sometimes also called GTIN or GTIN13 (Global Trade Identifier).
Problem Statement
The “Company” requires complete labeling of its products with barcodes under the EAN-13 Standard for its products in the warehouse, in order to use Barcode Readers. The “Company” has a file in .xlsx format with the following product information:
- Key
- Product Description
- Content
- RFC
- Barcode
The goal is to create a system that allows uploading a file in .xlsx format and generating labels in bulk in .PDF format, with the correct paper dimensions and product content.
How was the System Built?
For this project, the following plugins were used to complete the work as quickly as possible while meeting the project requirements:
- WordPress
- Gravity Forms
- Gravity Forms was used because this plugin allows for the quick and complete creation of any type of form for WordPress, in addition to having extensions such as Gravity PDF, which significantly saves time when generating PDFs. It also includes an entry importer and exporter that facilitates the task of uploading the .xlsx file.
- Gravity PDF
- An extension for the Gravity Forms plugin that allows generating PDF files quickly, dynamically, and easily.
- Gravity View
- Allows displaying, editing, and deleting Gravity Forms entries on the Front-End of the website.
- Custom Code.
- Custom code was also required to generate the PDF with conditional visibility logic, etc.
How does the EAN-13 Label Generator System Work?
This is the main page of the system. On this page, data can be entered via the form located above the table to generate labels manually. When a label is registered manually, it will be added to the table below, with the option to download it as a PDF.
Additionally, if the user wishes, they can edit labels manually by clicking on the key of any product, which redirects them to the page where the complete information of the selected label can be edited.
The following screen shows an example of what a label with a barcode and the final information looks like.
To display the table with pagination and a search bar, the Gravity View plugin was used to generate the view, which was embedded on a page via a shortcode to make it visible to users.
As we can see, WordPress is not only useful for building websites but can also serve as a very handy Swiss Army knife with tools for all levels, from programmers to people looking to build their website in a simple way.
Conclusion
The problem of generating labels in bulk was solved by using the appropriate plugins and tools without extensive coding, thereby speeding up delivery times. This will always be a very important factor when creating our projects.
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