Question

This is kind of a general question about barcodes. I’ve figured out how to get barcode content from a scanned barcode using the Zxing API. But I want to know how I can use that data to search for a product’s name and maybe other information online like what most other barcode scanning apps on the Market are able to do. Is there an API for this already or do these apps use website barcode databases (like http://www.upcdatabase.com) in the background?

Answer 1

You can use the Google Search API for Shopping.

The Search API for Shopping is intended for developers who want to
programmatically query data that has been uploaded to Google via the
Google Merchant Center. On Google, this data also surfaces on
applications like Product Search, Web Search, Book Search, as well as
Product Ads.

The Search API for Shopping targets the following use cases:

• Developers can build applications that query product offers across merchants.
• Merchants can use the API to query their own data by becoming a Commerce Search user.
• Publishers in the Google Affiliate Network can use the API to access product offers from their advertisers of choice.