A pointer from PHP Magazine today leads to a new article over on TechRepublic.com - Add barcodes to your Web apps using PEAR and PHP.

Barcodes provide a great solution for tying real-world items to associated computer data. An item with a barcode not only helps link associated data, but it also eliminates the need for a data entry operator to key in identifying information and possibly make mistakes.

Providing barcodes through Web applications is one way to tie hardcopy items to backend systems. I'll demonstrate how easy it is to use the PEAR::Image_Barcode class in PHP to dynamically create barcodes for your Web applications.

This package uses the GD libraries to build and display the barcode itself, but it can contain just about any encoded text that you'd like. There are three different formats (currently) included with this package - Code39, ean13, and int25 barcodes. Having dealt with barcodes in the past, it's good to see that PEAR has a good quality alternative to other options.