Storage Boxx PHP Inventory System (With QR & NFC Scanner)

Storage Boxx is an open-source PHP Inventory Management System. It is not a “super professional crazy bloated with features” kind of system. But it covers the basics, has a built-in webcam QR code scanner, built-in NFC scanner, and low stock warning push notifications. This will help small businesses get started with inventory stock keeping.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION

First, here are the download links and a quick “setup guide” for the impatient folks who don’t have the patience to read through everything.

 

LICENSE & DOWNLOAD

Storage Boxx is released under the MIT License. You are free to use it for personal and commercial projects, and modify it as you see fit. On the condition that the software is provided “as-is”. There are no warranties provided and “no strings attached”. Code Boxx and the authors are not liable for any claims, damages, or liabilities.

Download Storage Boxx | GitHub | SourceForge

 

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

  • LAMP/WAMP/MAMP/XAMPP
  • Apache Mod Rewrite
  • PHP MYSQL PDO Extension
  • At least PHP 8.0

 

INSTALLATION

Just access http://your-site.com in your browser and walk through the installer.

 

EQUIPMENT RECOMMENDATIONS

  • A simple USB QR Code scanner only costs like 30~40 bucks these days – Get yourself one if you don’t already have one.
  • NFC tags ain’t that bad either – 10 pieces of Ntag213 only cost 2-3 bucks. Buy them in bulk, and one piece will only cost a few cents.

 

 

HOW TO USE

So far so good? Let us now go through a quick crash course on how to use Storage Boxx.

 

Fullscreen Mode – Click Here

 

STORAGE BOXX FAQ

Storage Boxx is “not working”? Here are a few of the common problems and how to “fix” them.

 

I DELETED ALL ADMIN ACCOUNTS

recover.php
require "lib/CORE-Go.php";
$_CORE->load("Users");
$_CORE->Users->save("NAME", "EMAIL", "PASSWORD");

Just create an “account recovery” script to create a new account. Run and delete this afterward.

 

CHANGED DOMAIN OR PATH

  • Update HOST_BASE in lib/CORE-Config.php. Make sure to include the path (with a trailing slash) if not deployed at the base URL. E.G. http://site.com/storageboxx/
  • Delete the existing .htaccess file.
  • Create init.php.
    • require "lib/CORE-Go.php";
    • $_CORE->Route->init();
  • Access http://site.com/init.php, this will automatically regenerate the .htaccess file.
  • Delete init.php.
  • Clear the service worker and browser cache if you want to be “totally safe”.

 

 

PAGES ARE NOT RESOLVING OR SHOWING PROPERLY

  • Make sure that MOD_REWRITE is enabled in Apache.
  • Make sure that AllowOverride is set properly in Apache.
  • If using https://, make sure that your SSL cert and virtual host are properly set.
  • In Mac/Linux, make sure that Apache/PHP has permission to read the files and folders.

Here is a quick “working example” of a test site on my WAMP server:

httpd.conf OR httpd-vhosts.conf
<VirtualHost site.com:443>
  DocumentRoot "D:\http"
  ServerName site.com:443
  SSLEngine On
  SSLCertificateFile "C:/xampp/apache/conf/ssl.crt/server.crt"
  SSLCertificateKeyFile "C:/xampp/apache/conf/ssl.key/server.key"
  <Directory "D:\http">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

 

MANUAL INSTALLATION

  • Create a database and import all lib/SQL-*.sql in ascending order.
  • Open lib/CORE-Config.php, update the settings to your own.
    • The host settings.
    • Database settings.
    • If you want to develop mobile apps, consider enabling CORS.
    • Set your own JWT secret key, and the issuer to your domain or company name.
  • Run $_CORE->Route->init() to create .htaccess.
  • Create your own admin user. See “deleted all admin accounts” above.
  • Update index.php.
    • require __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "lib" . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "CORE-Go.php";
    • $_CORE->load("Route");
    • $_CORE->Route->run();

 

I WANT TO CHANGE THE DATE FORMAT

Login > under system settings section > there are 4 “MYSQL date/time format” settings, change them accordingly. These are simply formats for the MYSQL DATE_FORMAT() function.

 

NOT WORKING. DON’T KNOW WHY.

Open the developer’s console, reload the page and see the error message.

 

 

NFC FEATURES ARE “NOT WORKING”!

At the time of writing, Web NFC only works on Android Chrome and Baidu Browser – CanIUse

 

QUICK REFERENCE

This section is for the developers, a quick walkthrough of the general system structures.

 

FOLDER STRUCTURE

  • assets/ Public images, Javascript, CSS, etc…
  • lib/ Core engine and library files.
    • API-AAA.php The API endpoints. Will be deployed at http://site.com/api/AAA/.
    • CORE-CCC.php Core engine files. Try not to mess with these.
    • LIB-LLL.php Library files.
    • SQL-SSS.php SQL database files. Can actually delete these after installation.
  • pages/ HTML pages and template.
    • PAGE-PPP.php “Normal” pages. Will be deployed at http://site.com/PPP/.
    • REPORT-Loader.php A “special page” to generate reports.
    • TEMPLATE-TTT.php HTML page template.
    • MAIL-MMM.php Email templates.

 

THE FRAMEWORKS

Storage Boxx is built with:

 

DATABASE TABLES

USERS

users
Field Description
user_id The user ID, primary key.
user_name
The user name.
user_email
The user’s email address.
user_password
The password. Encrypted.
user_token NFC login token.
password_reset – Forgotten password recovery.
Field Description
user_id User ID, primary and foreign key.
reset_hash Password reset security hash.
reset_time Timestamp when the reset request is made. Spam prevention.

 

SYSTEM

settings
Field Description
setting_name Primary key.
setting_description Description of the setting.
setting_value The value of the setting.
setting_group Setting group.

  • 0 – “Hidden” system settings and definitions.
  • 1 – User changeable settings.
webpush
Field Description
endpoint Primary key, web push endpoint.
data JSON-encoded subscription object.

 

ITEMS

stock – The list of inventory items.
Field Description
stock_sku The SKU of the item, primary key.
stock_name Name of the item.
stock_desc Description of the item.
stock_unit Unit of measurement.
stock_low For low stock monitoring. Set to 0 for “no monitoring”.
stock_qty Current quantity in stock.
stock_mvt – Stock movement history.
Field Description
stock_sku The SKU of the item. Primary key.
mvt_date Date of movement entry. Primary key.
mvt_direction The direction of the movement.

  • I – Stock In (receive)
  • O – Stock Out (release)
  • T – Stock Take (audit)
  • D – Discard (dispose)
user_id The user who made this movement entry.
mvt_qty Quantity moved.
mvt_notes Notes, if any.

 

 

DEVELOPING STORAGE BOXX

As simple as it may be, going through the entire system is still going to take some time. So instead of “explaining line-by-line”, here is a condensed version of “how to quickly customize and upgrade”.

 

CORE BOXX LIBRARY REFERENCE

For most of the core modules, you can refer to the Core Boxx reference library.

 

STEP 1) CREATE/MODIFY DATABASE TABLES

Add your new tables or views, modify the existing ones.

 

STEP 2) ADD/UPDATE SYSTEM MODULES

lib/LIB-Report.php
class Report extends Core {
  function getMoveByUser ($id) {
    return $this->DB->fetchAll(
      "SELECT * FROM `stock_mvt` WHERE `user_id`=? ORDER BY `mvt_date` DESC", [$id]
    );
  }
}

To add a new module:

  • Create lib/LIB-Module.php.
  • Define class Module extends Core.
  • Add functions inside.

In this example, we add a new report module – lib/LIB-Report.php and class Report extends Core. That’s all. This new module can now be loaded via $_CORE->load("Report") and the function can be accessed via $_CORE->Report->getMoveByUser().

 

 

STEP 3) ADD/UPDATE API ENDPOINT (OPTIONAL)

lib/API-report.php
// (A) REGISTERED USERS ONLY
if (!isset($_SESS["user"])) {
  $_CORE->respond(0, "Please sign in first", null, null, 403);
}
 
switch ($_REQ) {
  // (B) INVALID REQUEST
  default:
    $_CORE->respond(0, "Invalid request", null, null, 400);
    break;
 
  // (C) MOVE BY USER REPORT
  case "getMoveByUser":
    $_CORE->autoGETAPI("Report", "getMoveByUser");
    break;
}

To add an API endpoint:

  • Core Boxx has an API structure of http://site.com/api/MODULE/REQUEST.
  • lib/API-report.php will create an API endpoint at http://site.com/api/report.
  • $_REQ is the requested service REQUEST segment of the URL.

So for this example, we can send $_POST["id"] = 123 to http://site.com/report/getMoveByUser/ to get the movement report. The API will reply with a JSON encoded string.

 

STEP 4) ADD/UPDATE HTML CSS JAVASCRIPT

  • Add your new pages in pages/.
    • For example, pages/PAGE-report.php can be accessed from http://site.com/report.
    • Take note – PAGE-report.php can only be accessed by users who are signed in.

That’s about it. Just reverse engineer and copy from the existing libraries, API, and pages… You will see the development pattern here.

34 thoughts on “Storage Boxx PHP Inventory System (With QR & NFC Scanner)”

  1. Hi, It’s working fine but i’m facing a little problem while tracking the inventory. Whenever i update the current stock it shows Date and time. The problem I’m facing is that , I’m living in India and the tracking time doesn’t match with IST [ Indian Standard Time] ie.. GMT +5:30 hours. Is their any way of getting it correct, yes then it would be really helpful for me.
    Thanks.

      1. Hi, thanks for the reply, it worked, but i also found 1 more problem is that when we log out it shows – ” AJAX ERROR Failed to parse JSON data.” on first time and it will logged out on second time.

      2. Thanks for reporting! But “AJAX error” is too generic – Open the developer’s console and see what the server is complaining about. Good luck.

  2. Jeroen van der Steen

    I’m a small printshop owner from Rotterdam, the Netherlands
    and I would like to keep track of my paper and office supplies.

    Recently I discovered Storage Boxx and it really looks simple to use,
    and efficient for working with by scanning QR-codes.
    Is it possible to add extra fields for Items, like ‘price’ or ‘product-image’.

    I also tried making by own stock management system in PHP,
    but it’s not efficient to work with.

  3. Hi there,
    I have checked and debugged as best i can but i am not seeing what the problem is.
    I have also made sure that PHP 7.4 is installed. I am getting the following error when installing:
    Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function apache_get_version() in /home/ccmuhahx/public_html/ua/lib/CORE-install.php:72 Stack trace: #0 /home/ccmuhahx/public_html/ua/index.php(2): require() #1 {main} thrown in /home/ccmuhahx/public_html/ua/lib/CORE-install.php on line 72

    any assistance would be greatly appreciated
    Garth

    1. undefined function apache_get_version() > PHP is not installed as a module of Apache

      Installer updated. Nothing is wrong if you are running Apache. It’s just running in another manner. Follow up with an “apache cgi vs module” search on the Internet if you wish to learn more.

      1. Thank you, however the new installer is throwing the following error:
        Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function str_contains() in E:\Software\wamp\www\php\Storage-Boxx-2022-05-05-a\lib\CORE-install.php on line 72
        Error: Call to undefined function str_contains() in E:\Software\wamp\www\php\Storage-Boxx-2022-05-05-a\lib\CORE-install.php on line 72

        Regards
        Garth

      2. Of course. str_contains() only exists in PHP 8+.

        1) Updated installer to use strpos instead.
        2) Required PHP version has been updated to 8.0. Reason – PHP 7.4 will come to its end of life in Nov 2022. A gentle reminder to update your server soon. https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php
        3) If you still want to continue with 7.4, edit lib/CORE-install.php C1 – change I_MIN_PHP back to 7.4.0

  4. Hi there, works perfectly. Only problem is, it does not scan any barcode or QR code.
    Error always says: Invalid SKU

    Any ideas?
    Thanks
    Garth

  5. Hi W.S. TOH,

    I succeeded.
    Thank you for your patience and please allow me to continue learning with your help.
    projects seem to me the best way to really learn!
    all good,

  6. Hi W.S.TOH,
    I almost managed, that is, after “installation”, at the primary login with user: “admin@sb.com” and the password “123456”, click on “Sign in” and the “AJAX ERROR” window appears.
    “AJAX call error!”
    What should I investigate?

    1. Probably API path issues, re-download the latest version. Just import the SQL, and access your site – This thing now has a simple installer… and a webcam QR code scanner.

      1. ok, i tried and got stuck in the “installer” where I got the “Fetch error – See console” error, but I noticed two things:
        1. This error occurs regardless of what user and password you entered to access the database
        2. The file “lib / storage-boxx.sql” is empty, ie it has only a command line “ctrl – C – exit!” and nothing about the tables on which the database is built
        …help me please !

  7. Hi, I installed in base path and can’t get past login screen. It seems to be dropping me at “(B4) USERS NOT LOGGED IN + INVALID PATH”

    What do you think is the problem?

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