B4A Library Minimal Text OCR using Google Vision

[Copied from "Google Play Vision Services or Android Vision API wrapper" in "Bugs and wishlist" forum]

Hi again,

I found a solution by writing a wrapper library for my modified code written in Android Studio; thanks to tutorials and example code in this forum. This wrapper only performs text recognizing/scanning on an existing image file. It does not display anything.

BSTextOCRMin 1.0

Methods

• Initialize(prmEventName As String)
• Run(prmFileName As String)
  prmFileName should contains full file name, example value:
  fname = File.Combine(File.Combine(File.DirRootExternal, "Pictures"), "tmpscan.jpg")

Events

• onSuccess(prmBlocks As String, prmLines As String, prmWords As String)
  They are the results in comma separated. Note: They may contain empty values.
• onError(prmErrMsg As String)
• onDone

Dependencies

constraint-layout-1.0.1.aar
com.android.support:support-v4
com.android.support:appcompat-v7
com.android.support:design
com.google.android.gms:play-services-vision

Permisions

• android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

Installation

• Extract "BSTextOCRMin.jar" and "BSTextOCRMin.xml" to B4A Additional Libraries folder.
• Extract "add-res" onto project's folder.

Additional code

#AdditionalRes: ..\add-res
#Extends: android.support.v7.app.AppCompatActivity

Put it below "#Region Activity Attributes".
"add-res" is a folder containing a few files required and the name might be changed to whatever you'd like. This folder should be placed in the same folder with "Files" and "Objects".

Recommended implementation

• Call camera intent to get a picture file.
• Enhance the picture (resize, sharpen, contrast, greyscale, or other) to expect better scan accuracy.
• Scan the picture with this library and get result.
• Optionally, delete the picture file after done.

I share this for B4A community to be used freely. Comments are welcomed. Thank you.


Cheers,

 

[roberto64]

hi Xenno, can you have an example already done?
regards

 

[ruut]

Hi Xenno,
It would be great if you could extend your code examples a bit. You wrote:

Methods

• Initialize(prmEventName As String)
• Run(prmFileName As String)
  prmFileName should contains full file name, example value:
  fname = File.Combine(File.Combine(File.DirRootExternal, "Pictures"), "tmpscan.jpg")

I am wondering how to feed the fname string into the BSTextOCRMin 1.0 object? What to use for prmEventName during the initialization phase.