Magnetic Gift Card Swipe + CF Form

Question

Hey everyone!
I got one for you - possible challange? Maybe it cant be
done? I dont know.
Basically I am trying to setup a test application so that
when a plastic magnetic gift card (that I encoded) is swipped with
a magnetic card reader - I want it so that when it is swipped it
actually fills out a coldfusion form (on the web) with its values.
Does anyone know if this is possible? There are 3 values I am
trying to pull off the card and have entered into the CF form.
This is the card reader:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=350142691991&Category=26261
maybe it wont work for the job etc?
But basiclaly I want to click a page in my CF website, and
have it wait until the card is swipped (connected to USB) and when
it has, fill out the form.
If anyone has any suggestions or artilces to read, I am all
ears.
Interesting Article
See "Wednesday, Thursday"
http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/node/296187
Thanks

Answer 1

Ssirseth wrote:
>
> So its really that easy. I was speaking with some other
developers on the
> subject they advised me I should have a vb.net program
on the computer, that
> reads the card, and then sends all the info to my DB
online though a
> webservice. They say this is way more secure etc etc
etc???
>
Yes it is that easy and ColdFusion is not involved at all
with the card
reader, client end of things. ColdFusion could easily be the
server end
that receives the data and interact with the database and
returns the
results to the client. It can even do all of this with web
services if
you want it to.
But as for reading the card on a client and having the
results appear in
a form on the client and having that form sent to the server
from the
the client. That is all client programming and has nothing to
do with
ColdFusion as ColdFusion does not do client programming.
AIR does client programming via Flash|Flex. VB does client
programming.
Java does client programming. C|C++|C# does client
programming. But
I'm not sure how much client programming you need to do.
I presume card readers come already programmed to interact
with the
client computers they are plugged into. And you would just
use the API
provided by the card reader manufacture to get the data read
from the
card and somehow sent from the client to your server.
Then from the server, this is just straight up HTTP get|post
and|or web
service requests that ColdFusion process normally as it has
no idea how
the client got the data that was sent to it and it does not
care.