Web Barcode for Database Apps, CompTIA Certified

Avery Labels Visual Basic Plug-In
Installation Guide

Introduction

This i-fax.com Plug-In gives you the ability to create sheets of barcoded laser address labels that can be used to tag documents and link them automatically to data in your database when they are faxed or scanned. With i-fax.com, your customers will not require any special software or Plug-Ins.

The i-fax.com plug-in is available at Download Plug-In.

This installation manual was designed to provide software developers with an easy guide to installing the i-fax.com Plug-In on document creation systems.

If you have any questions that are not addressed by this manual or if you have suggestions on how i-fax.com Inc. could serve you better, we welcome your input at service@i-fax.com.

Note
You can activate the i-fax.com service by signing up at https://www.secure.i-fax.com/terms.html.

There is no charge for this Plug-In. There is no charge for producing documents or web pages containing the i-fax.com barcode.

Before you can begin to receive and link documents to transactions, your i-fax.com service must be activated.

i-fax.com Architecture

The i-fax.com Plug-In is split into two parts:

The Barcode Generator
The Barcode Generator takes identifiers to be encoded in barcodes (31 character strings made up out of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens and spaces) and generates sheets of laser address labels with barcodes on them, which can then be peeled off and stuck to existing paper documents.

i-fax.com also provides plug-ins in various languages for many document types as well as utilities for merging barcodes with existing PDF documents. Please visit http://www.i-fax.com/plugin.html for a full list of our plug-ins.
Your Website
When an end user sends a barcoded document to the i-fax.com server (by fax or scanner), the barcode is interpreted by i-fax.com's server. The i-fax.com server renames the document with the encoded identifier found in the barcode and sends the document to you by FTP file transfer or as an email.

**Visual Basic Avery Labels Version of the i-fax.com Plug-In**

**Installing the Visual Basic Avery Labels Version of the i-fax.com Plug-In onto your Website**

Place the dll files in a location where your application can find them, normally the same directory your application resides in. For an Visual Basic application, this would be the bin directory of the application. Make sure that the dll files have the correct ownership and permissions to be accessible by your application.

The following is a list of the class files in the i-fax.com Visual Basic Avery Labels Plug-in:

com.Ifax.Barcode.Labels10.dll
com.Ifax.Barcode.Labels14.dll
com.Ifax.Barcode.Labels14a.dll
com.Ifax.Barcode.Labels20.dll
Place the Visual Basic example files ifaxlabelsXXXexample.vb and the html files ifaxlabelsXXXexample.htmlin the application directory. To use them, visit the html files in your browser and enter the information you wish to have encoded in barcodes. The laser address label sheet will be returned to the browser as a pdf document, which you can print to the label sheets of the appropriate size.

**Description of the Visual Basic Avery Labels Version of the i-fax.com Plug-In**

The i-fax.com Visual Basic Avery Labels Plug-In is divided into four separate classes, each creating labels of a different format:

Class Name	Size	Lines of Text	Labels per Sheet	Avery	Staples	Grand & Toy
Labels20	4" x 1"	1	20	#05161	#479879	#99189
Labels14	4" x 1¹/3"	2	14	#05162	#479878	#99190
Labels14a	4" x 1¹/2"	3	14			#99179
Labels10	4" x 2"	6	10	#05163	#479877	#99181

**The i-fax.com Barcode Generator (Visual Basic Avery Labels Version)**

The i-fax.com barcode is available for many platforms and formats. In the Avery Labels version, your encoded unique identifiers are converted into a PDF document for printing to sheets of laser address labels, each label bearing an i-fax.com barcode. The Avery Labels version of the Barcode is intended for creating barcoded labels that can be stuck on existing paper documents.

For information on using i-fax.com barcodes with other document formats (Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, HTML, GIF, SVG and BMP), please visit http://www.i-fax.com/plugin.html.

Using the com.Ifax.Barcode.LabelsXXX Classes

There are two steps to creating sheets of barcoded laser address labels using the com.Ifax.Barcode.LabelsXXX classes. First you add all the barcodes you want to create using the addBarcode() method, then you generate the PDF containing all the sheets of generated barcodes using the getPDF() method.

For each barcode you want to create, you call addBarcode() and pass the following parameters:

string type is a character, either "A", "N" or "H" which chooses how the transaction id is to be formatted when it is placed above the barcode on the output PDF. Use "N" if you want the transaction ID to be formatted like a number, with spaces added after every three numbers starting at the right. Use "H" if you want the transaction ID to be formatted like hexadecimal, with a space after every two characters, starting at the left. Use "A" if you want no formatting at all. Note that the formatting doesn't affect how the transaction id is interpreted, only how it is displayed above the barcode.
String id is the identifier to be encoded in barcode, a 31 character string made up out of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens and spaces.
string text1 to text6 are optional lines of text that appear under each barcode. The number of text lines is dependent on the size of the labels, the largest label (4" x 2", Labels10) supports six lines of text under the label, the smallest (4" x 1", Labels20) only supports one. See the table above to see how many lines of text are available for each label class.

void addBarcode(string type, string id, string text1[, string text2][, string text3][, string text4][, string text5][, string text6])

Once all the labels that you want to create have been added, you create the PDF document with the getPDF() method which takes one parameter.

Stream out is the stream you want to output the pdf file to. Normally you would forward this to a file or stream it directly to a web browser.

void getPDF(Stream out)

Browser Behavior Warning
If you are using a Avery Labels Plug-In as part of a web application to deliver barcoded Avery Labels to users, you may wish to temporarily save the barcoded Avery Labels PDF file to disk and redirect the user's browser to the new PDF file.

Some users running Internet Explorer and the Acrobat plug-in may experience difficulty handling "streamed" PDF output generated dynamically.

Placing the Avery Labels Barcode

The laser address labels produced should be stuck on your documents carefully.

Placement of the label must follow these rules:

The label must be at the top of the page, with a margin of empty space on three sides (approximately ¾ above, right and left).
The label should appear above all logos and graphics on the page.

Warning
Failure to place the html Barcode in the correct area of a document may cause the Barcode to be rejected by i-fax.com's Server.

Your Website

When an end user sends a barcoded document to the i-fax.com server (by fax or scanner), the barcode is interpreted by i-fax.com's server. The i-fax.com server renames the document with the encoded identifier found in the barcode and sends the document to your website by FTP file transfer or as an email.

File Types

i-fax.com will deliver files to your server by FTP or Email. Every file sent from the i-fax.com server will follow this naming convention:

i-fax.com File Naming Convention `aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb_999.TTT`
`aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa`	The unique identifier found in the i-fax.com Barcode (created by the i-fax.com barcode generator by your application).
`bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb`	A transaction key assigned by i-fax.com.
`999`	The page number (000 is reserved for the thumbnail) for JPEG files only.
`TTT`	The file extension of different output formats, e.g. pdf, tif, jpg, udt.

Unique Identifier	The unique identifier is the value that your application assigned at the time the i-fax.com Barcode was created using the i-fax.com barcode generator.
Transaction Key	i-fax.com assigns a unique transaction key to every transaction that is processed by a server. This transaction key ensures that each file that your web server receives is unique and is not overwritten in the event that a user sends the same document twice.
Page Number	The JPEG standard does not support multi-page documents. As a result, i-fax.com will deliver a separate JPEG file for each page in the document. These files will be numbered from 001 ... 999. Please note that number 000 is reserved for a JPEG thumbnail page that is explained below.

File Formats

The following file types are produced by the i-fax.com server:

The first page of the document is provided in a miniature version in JPEG format (240 x 345 pixels). The "thumbnail" allows your application to display a small version of the document (e.g. as a search result).
When you sign-up for the i-fax.com service you will be given the option of selecting one or more image formats for your documents. i-fax.com supports 3 image formats. The format you choose will depend on your application:
1. Adobe PDF
  The i-fax.com server can produce a multi-page PDF file containing the document. The document is compressed in Group IV format to conserve storage space.
2. TIFF
  The i-fax.com server can produce a multi-page Group IV TIFF file containing the document.
3. JPEG
  The i-fax.com server will produce a series of JPEG file, each containing a page of the document.

If you have elected to receive files from i-fax.com using FTP (File Transfer Protocol), i-fax.com will send a file with a .udt extension to indicate that your document has been sent. This file will not appear on your server until the JPEG thumbnail and the document images in PDF, TIFF and/or JPEG have been delivered. Note: Your application should not start processing an FTP transfer until the .udt file is detected on your server.

The .udt file contains information about the files received by i-fax.com.

Field Name	Description
CallerID	The caller id of the fax machine that the document was faxed from. If the document was not faxed or there was no caller id then the field is set to "Unknown".
TransID	The unique identifier encoded in the barcode on the document. This is the same unique id used in the returned file names.
Pages	The count of pages processed for the document.
Orientation	"0" if the document was scanned or faxed with the barcode right side up, or "1" if the barcode was upside down. When a document is faxed or scanned in upside down, the i-fax.com server rotates them before sending them on for ease of handling.
To	If the document was efiled instead of faxed, the "To:" line of the email is put here
From	If the document was efiled instead of faxed, the "From:" line of the email is put here
Subject	If the document was efiled instead of faxed, the "Subject:" line of the email is put here
Senddate	If the document was efiled instead of faxed, the "Date:" line of the email header is put here

A two-page document encoded with a "unique identifier" of 639787744 that is faxed upside down would have the following in the .udt file:

CallerID=Unknown
TransID=63978744
Pages=2
Orientation=1

Note:
You will find examples of the Adobe PDF, TIFF, JPEG and .udt files with the files you receive when you Download the Plug-In.

File Transfer Options

i-fax.com can deliver files to your server in one of two formats:

FTP
i-fax.com will transfer a group of files to the FTP server you specify when you sign-up for the i-fax.com service. You will be asked to provide a directory on your site that is accessible to an FTP transfer.

It is recommended that you design your application to poll this directory looking for files with the .udt extension. i-fax.com always sends a .udt file when a transaction has been fully transferred.

A number of strategies can be used to initiate the polling process. The strategy you chose will depend on the tools available to you on the web server you are using for your website:
1. On Unix or Linux servers, you can schedule a job in the crontab that will capture transactions in your FTP directory and incorporate them with your web database. (This will not be possible in most hosted web environments.)
2. On a Windows NT^®/2000 server, you can schedule a task in the Task Scheduler that will capture transactions in your FTP directory and incorporate them with your web database. (This will not be possible in most hosted web environments.)
3. You can imbed a CGI script in a web page that is executed when the page is accessed. The CGI script can be designed to detect the arrival of a .udt file in the FTP directory and process the incoming document. The CGI script can be placed within a page that runs when users wish to access a document or in a page that is run frequently.
Email
i-fax.com will email a group of files to the email address you specify when you sign-up for the i-fax.com service.

Each email sent by the i-fax.com server will contain all of the files pertaining to a specific document. In the event that an end user sends multiple documents in one fax or scan (each document having a unique i-fax.com Barcode), the i-fax.com server will transmit each document and its associated files in a separate email.

Emails sent by the i-fax.com server will contain the relevant files for a given document as attachments. Each email will contain the following entry in the "subject" line:

Document for transaction #{unique identifier from i-fax.com Barcode}

A number of strategies can be used to incorporate documents that have arrived by email. These include programs such as Procmail (for Unix and Linux environments) and Microsoft Exchange (for Windows NT^®/2000).

© 2013 i-fax.com Inc. All rights reserved. i-fax and the i-fax logo are trademarks of i-fax.com Inc. HP is a trademark of the Hewlett-Packard Company. All other brand or product names are trade marks or registered trade marks of their respective owners.

Avery Labels Visual Basic Plug-In Installation Guide