Introducing: WooCommerce Order Barcodes

A few of the WordPress plugins I have built have been WooCommerce extensions – that is, add-ons to WooThemes’ exceptionally popular eCommerce plugin. Some of these are free, while others are premium extensions available for purchase directly from the WooThemes website. One of these premium extensions that I built is WooCommerce Order Barcodes.

What is it?

WooCommerce Order Barcodes is, as the name suggests, a WooCommerce extension that creates barcodes for each of your orders. The plugin uses open-source Javascript libraries to generate 100% unique barcodes for each order placed through your site. It can handle numerous types of barcodes, from standard types to QR codes.

In addition it can also scan barcodes that have been created for orders. This means that you could, for example, run a hotel booking system and give each of your guests a unique barcode that can be scanned in on arrival and then, on their departure, rescanned to mark that they have checked out. This would create an end-to-end automated booking system.

Who is it built for?

This extension is built for anyone who has a need for scannable barcodes to be attached to their orders. The most obvious use cases are hotel reservations, packing slips and event tickets, but it’s the type of extension for which users will find many and varied implementations.

Interestingly, while the event ticketing side of things works for simple uses, Order Barcodes is not a full solution for that kind of thing. The reason for this is that tickets need a unique barcode for each product (i.e. ticket) in the order. To remedy that I have been working on a full-blown ticketing extension that will integrate with Order Barcodes to provide a complete and versatile ticketing service.[1. We actually used a beta version of the ticketing extension to sell tickets for the first WooCommerce Conference earlier this year.]

Why did I build it?

This is one of the more rare instances where I built a plugin under my own steam that I didn’t actually have an immediate use for myself. In this case my motivation was simply that I saw a missing piece of functionality in the WooCommerce space and I was keen to work out a good solution for providing it.

10 responses to “Introducing: WooCommerce Order Barcodes”

saad

December 16, 2014 at 8:13 am

i want to add the barcode in pdf invoice. is it possible?

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49 Ideas

January 19, 2015 at 10:34 pm

Hi,

I’m looking at your Order Barcodes extension, and see that you are working on a “full blown ticketing extension” that will work with bardcodes… how far out is this? I’m looking to host ticket sales for community events in my town and using Vendors plugin, I am hoping that small groups can manage their own event tickets and check people in. Thanks in advance.

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1. John
  
  June 17, 2016 at 3:59 am
  
  Limit barcodes to one time use and add expiration dates with these modifications: bullrush41.com
  Still looking for per item vs per order solution
  
  Reply
terry

February 5, 2015 at 1:05 am

I need to upload my clients current bar codes in csv Matching the sku # already loaded in the products
The bar code numbering needs to start from the last code.
Will your plugin do this or can it be modified to?
Thanks terry

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Winfried

February 20, 2015 at 10:06 pm

Hi, I bought WooCommerce Order Barcode. My intention is to use this for ticket sales. Is this already possible per individual ticket with unique barcodes in one order? Or do I have to wait for the “full blown ticketing extension”

If I have to wait for the “full blown ticketing extension” When do you expect it to launch?

Awaiting your reply

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1. Craig Allen
  
  June 5, 2015 at 4:45 pm
  
  Any news on this? I could really use it for the individual items and not the just the total order.
  
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George S

November 19, 2015 at 11:12 am

I strongly need that too. Any news on the extension?

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Thomas Martin

January 17, 2018 at 10:17 pm

Hi Hugh,

thank you for contributing this plugin, I bought it through WPSprings last year and it worked fine until a few weeks ago. – Suddenly, the QR-Code generated (for email attachments) does not reflect the uuid-string generated for the order anymore. – Actually, the uuid-string encoded in the QR code seems to be invalid in the sense that it is not even associated with any order-id at all. However, the uuid-string printed right underneath the QR code is indeed valid and capable of looking-up the associated order-id.

I have a hunch that 2 uuid-strings/QR codes are generated per order instead of just one. – After looking at the code, I cannot come up with any possible reason, though, but the constructor (of the WooCommerce_Order_Barcodes class) being called twice, while I can clearly see it being instantiated at only one spot (i.e.: $instance = WooCommerce_Order_Barcodes::instance( __FILE__, ‘1.3.0’ ); in woo commerce-order-barcodes.php)

It would be very nice, if you could offer an idea or advise how to further debug or even fix this.

For your efforts, thank you very much in advance!

Best regards,

-Thomas

ps: the QR-Code generated for existing orders (in the dashboard) works just fine

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1. Hugh
  
  January 18, 2018 at 9:01 am
  
  I’ve never heard of WPSprings before, but if you bought the extension from anywhere other than WooCommerce.com then you’re being ripped off and have no way of trusting the code that you are installing on your website.
  
  I no longer work on or support this extension personally as it is entirely owned by WooCommerce now, so you will need to log a support ticket with them. The fact that you bought the extension through an unethical reseller, however, means that you don’t have access to WooCommerce support for this. That’s one of the many reasons why these resellers are just bad news and should be avoided.
  
  My suggestion would be to buy the extension from WooCommerce.com – that will make sure that you have the correct version with no broken code and then, if you still have an issue, then WooCommerce support can help you out.
  
  Reply
Thomas Martin

January 20, 2018 at 9:33 pm

Hi Hugh, thank you very much for you prompt reply. – It is a bit hard to distinguish between legitimate (i.e. CodeCanyon ?) and non-legitimate (WPSrings ?) dealers or sites (when you are a WP/WC beginner).

So, I am sorry for the two of us – I had paid in good faith and you seem to have not received your fair share.

Anyway, thanks again for responding at all …

Cheers,

-Thomas

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