Web app - Biometric system connection

Question

Hi,

I will be developing an application for a club where they will have visitors use biometric systems(finger print) or magnetic cards to mark their attendance.

This application is planned as a web app, made using PHP/MySQL/Javascript. It does a lot of other things as well.

What I wanted to find out is how is the interface between Biometric/Megnetic Card systems to a web app done?

I've never worked on this and am hoping if someone who has experience with this can throw some light on this as to how this could be accomplished. Any pointers will be appreciated.

Also, we will be hosting this application remotely. So we won't have physical access to the web-server.

(I'm afraid there's got to be some form of application installed on a pc that would interface with the hardware and probably makes calls to the web app. But, if there was a way to connect it to the web app directly, then the app would be easy to deploy to any location with minimal installation.)

Thanks! :)

Answer 1

How is the hardware connected? Directly to the app server, or to a standalone box of some sort? If it's a standalone box, then yes you'll have to have some kind of program on the box collect the data and send it to the web app. If it's connected directly to the app server, then you need to write something that either polls the hardware or receives messages/events from the driver and DTRT wrt the web app.