Ean 13 barcode generator code#

The start and stop characters are identical to each other. The guard bars are the start, stop, and center characters in an EAN symbol. This enables each numeric character to be represented by using just two bars and two spaces, which is the fewest number of modules required per character of any symbology.Īlthough EAN barcodes come in a number of different message lengths, these lengths are not fully variable as they are with other barcode symbologies. Most barcode symbologies print bars and spaces in only two widths, but with EAN, four different widths are used. Six symbol characters, including check digitĮAN-13 is so called because it encodes 12 digits of numeric message data and a check digit, for a total of 13 digits.

The symbol comprises the following elements: The GS1 implementation is defined in GS1 General Specifications.

Ean 13 barcode generator code#

A UPC-A symbol that is created in the United States can be transformed into an EAN-13 symbol by prefixing it with a zero.ĮAN-13 is defined in ISO/IEC 15420 Information technology - Automatic identification and data capture techniques - EAN/UPC bar code symbology specification. The EAN and JAN symbologies are identical, except that JAN uses a country code in the range of 490 to 499, which indicates that the manufacturer was registered in Japan.ĮAN-13 is a superset of UPC-A, which means that any system that can read EAN-13 can also read UPC-A. EAN-13 is used around the world for automatic identification of retail products, including in the US, where retail scanning systems have been required to read EAN-13 since 2005. The European Article Numbering (EAN) system (also known as International Article Number) and the Japanese Article Numbering (JAN) system are members of the UPC barcode family that was developed in the 1970s for automatic identification of retail products.