usps_intelligent_barcode is a pure ruby gem to generate a USPS IMB (Intelligent Mail Barcode). More specifically, it generates the string of characters you should print using one of the USPS Intelligent Barcode fonts.

Origin

This project was forked from Ryan Taylor's https://github.com/rtlong/USPS-intelligent-barcode Long, in order to add tests and refactor. It is not a drop-in replacement: I renamed most methods and classes, and eliminated the #draw method.

Install

gem install usps_intelligent_barcode

Note: This gem was previously named USPS-intelligent-barcode. If you're migrating from the old gem name, see MIGRATION.md.

Example

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
lib_dir = File.expand_path('../lib', __dir__)
$LOAD_PATH.unshift(lib_dir) unless $LOAD_PATH.include?(lib_dir)
require 'usps_intelligent_barcode'

barcode_id = '01'
service_type = '234'
mailer_id = '567094'
serial_number = '987654321'
routing_code = '01234567891'
barcode = Imb::Barcode.new(barcode_id,
                           service_type,
                           mailer_id,
                           serial_number,
                           routing_code)
p barcode.barcode_letters
# => "AADTFFDFTDADTAADAATFDTDDAAADDTDTTDAFADADDDTFFFDDTTTADFAAADFTDAADA"

Generating Barcode PDFs

The gem includes bundled USPS Intelligent Mail Barcode fonts. To generate a PDF with a barcode:

gem install prawn
ruby examples/generate_pdf.rb

This creates /tmp/barcode_to_pdf.pdf with the barcode and its component fields. The USPS fonts (USPSIMBStandard and USPSIMBCompact) are included in the fonts/ directory - no installation required.

Standard

This gem is based upon standard USPS-B-3200H, which is linked to from Intelligent Mail Barcode for Mailpieces

Supported Ruby Versions

This gem is tested and supported on:

• ruby-3.2
• ruby-3.3
• ruby-3.4
• ruby-4.0

whoami

Wayne Conrad kf7qga@gmail.com

Gem versioning

This library uses Semantic Versioning. It promises not to make breaking changes to its API without bumping the major version.

Credits

Thanks to Ryan Taylor Long for his original work, without which I would have been lost in the USPS specification.