Storage Boxx is an open-source PHP Inventory Management System. With a built-in webcam QR scanner, NFC scanner, passwordless login, and an optional experimental AI assistant.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION
First, here are the download links and a quick “setup guide” for the impatient folks who don’t want to read through everything.
LICENSE & DOWNLOAD
GitHub | GitHub – AI Assistant | SourceForge
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.
SORRY FOR THE ADS...
But someone has to pay the bills, and sponsors are paying for it. I insist on not turning Code Boxx into a "paid scripts" business, and I don't "block people with Adblock". Every little bit of support helps.
Buy Me A Coffee Code Boxx eBooks
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
- LAMP/WAMP/MAMP/XAMPP
- Apache Mod Rewrite
- PHP MYSQL PDO Extension
- PHP OpenSSL Extension
- At least PHP 8.0
INSTALLATION
Just copy/unzip into your HTTP folder. Access http://your-site.com
in the browser and walk through the installer.
HOW TO USE
So far so good? Let us now go through a quick crash course on how to use Storage Boxx.
EQUIPMENT RECOMMENDATIONS
- Webcam – If you are using a desktop without a webcam, a simple one only costs about $20~30.
- USB QR Code scanner – Alternatively, a “dedicated barcode scanner” will cost about $30~40 bucks.
- NFC tags – 10 pieces of Ntag213 only cost 2-3 bucks. Buy them in bulk, and one piece will only cost a few cents.
- Fingerprint sensors – These are kind of expensive… But I got lucky with a $25 “Made in China” that works just fine.
- Label printer – Print your QR codes. There are Bluetooth ones that can pair with smartphones.
PART 1) REGISTER ITEMS
First step, register all your items. You can do it one by one, or the smarter way is to upload a CSV file if you have a lot of products.
PART 2) REGISTER BATCHES
Now that the items are in place, create the batches for every item.
- Batches are particularly good for managing items with expiry dates, or if you want to track how slow/fast a batch moves.
- For the people who don’t care about “batches” – Just create a dummy batch and use it for a lifetime.
- Print the QR code for the batches, and/or create the NFC tags.
PART 3) ITEM MOVEMENT
Record the item/batch movement accordingly over time. Pretty self-explanatory.
- Set the direction (in, out, discard, stock take).
- Set the quantity.
- Add notes, if any.
- Enter the SKU and batch – Or just scan.
PART 4) CHECK
You can access the “check” section at any time, check the stock movement history.
EXTRA) PASSWORDLESS SIGN IN
The days of stinky passwords are over.
- You can create NFC login tags (staff card) for users. So long as they have a compatible device/browser, they can use it to login without entering the user/password.
- Alternatively, open the user menu after you have signed in (top-right corner) – Passwordless Login. Register to sign in with your fingerprint, face recognition, or pin number.
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
require "lib/CORE-Go.php";
$_CORE->load("Users");
$_CORE->Users->save("NAME", "EMAIL", "PASSWORD", "A");
Just create an “account recovery” script to create a new account. Run and delete this afterward.
CHANGED DOMAIN OR PATH
- Update
SITE_NAME
andHOST_BASE
inlib/CORE-Config.php
. 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.htaccess
and updateCB-manifest.json
. - Delete
init.php
. - Clear the service worker, flush the browser cache, and do a hard reload 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:
<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>
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
UNABLE TO GENERATE JSON WEB TOKEN KEYS
Make sure that the OpenSSL extension is properly installed.
- Linux
- It is as simple as
sudo apt-get install openssl
. - Or
yum install openssl
for the CentOS users. - Then,
php -i | grep -i openssl
.
- It is as simple as
- Windows – I am using XAMPP and OpenSSL is already included. But a hiccup got me stumped for a while.
- Start > Search for “system environment” > “Edit the system environment variables” > “Environment variables”.
- Add a new system variable called
OPENSSL_CONF
and point it to theopenssl.cnf
file. By default, it is located atxampp\php\extras\openssl\openssl.cnf
.
FOR THE DEVELOPERS
This section is for the developers, with a couple of development notes for customization.
BUILT ON CORE BOXX
- At least go through the very short tutorial.
- Thereafter, go into the deeper concepts:
- Storage Boxx has also adopted the following modules:
SUPPORTING MULTIPLE HOST/DOMAIN NAMES
- In
CORE-Config.php
, detect the origin and setHOST_BASE
accordingly. - If you have different paths, you are going to face problems with the manifest. E.G.
https://sitea.com
andhttps://siteb.com/storageboxx
.- You can create multiple
CB-manifest.json
, each with a differentstart_url
andscope
. InTEMPLATE-top.php
, point to the “correct manifest” accordingly. - Alternatively, generate the manifest dynamically using PHP.
- You can create multiple
SETTING TIMEZONES
- You can change the default timezone in
CORE-Config.php
,SYS_TZ
andSYS_TZ_OFFSET
. Beware though, this can mess up the timestamps in the database if you already have entries. - If you have to support multiple timezones, it will be wise to keep the system default to
UTC
. Calculate the offset in PHP or MYSQL queries instead.
I WANT TO CHANGE THE DATE FORMAT
- Login > System Settings > There are 4 “MYSQL date/time format” settings, change them accordingly. These are simply formats for the MYSQL
DATE_FORMAT()
function. - Use the respective date/time format in your SQL –
"SELECT DATE_FORMAT(`col`, '".DT_LONG."') FROM `table`"
.
EXPIRING ITEMS NOTIFICATION
Tricky.
- Create a
expire-notify.php
script, set it to run every 24 hours in Windows Task Scheduler orCRON
. - Add a
EXPIRE_WARN_DAYS
setting. - Modify
$_CORE->Report->getExpiry()
to get expiring items withEXPIRE DAYS > 0 && EXPIRE DAYS <= EXPIRE_WARN_DAYS
. - If there are expiring items, send the notification.
- It will be wise to add another
EXPIRE_NOTIFIED
table to keep theitem_id
andbatch_name
… Or the system will nag every 24 hours until the item expires.
AI ASSISTANT
So, you may have noticed that the AI Assistant is “missing” or “not working” out of the box. It’s a long story.
REQUIREMENTS
- Python – Yes, Python. Not PHP. Version 3.9 to 3.10 seems to work fine at the time of writing.
- Microsoft C++ Build Tools
- CMake
- Nvidia CUDA Toolkit – If you have an Nvidia graphics card.
- An Nvidia graphics card with at least 8GB VRAM is highly recommended. You can TRY to run on CPU, but it is painfully slow and practically useless.
INSTALLATION
- Copy/unzip this module into your existing Storage Boxx folder.
- I have tried multiple AI models, codellama-7b-instruct.Q5_K_M.gguf is the only one that produced decent(ish) results – Download that into
chatbot/models
or choose a better/larger/smarter model on your own. - Edit
chatbot/a_settings.py
, change themodel_name
to your own. - BE WARNED, GIGABYTES WORTH OF DOWNLOAD! –
0-setup.bat
(Windows)0-setup.sh
(Linux).
LAUNCH
- Run
1-bot.bat
(Windows)1-bot.sh
(Linux/Mac), this will deploy the bot athttp://your-site.com:8008
. - Just access
http://your-site.com/ai
(must be signed in).
Hello, I am getting following error:
Fatal error: Uncaught RuntimeException: Unable to create the key in C:\xampp\htdocs\lib\webpush\web-token\jwt-core\Util\ECKey.php:98 Stack trace: #0 C:\xampp\htdocs\lib\webpush\web-token\jwt-core\Util\ECKey.php(72): Jose\Component\Core\Util\ECKey::createECKeyUsingOpenSSL(‘P-256’) #1 C:\xampp\htdocs\lib\webpush\web-token\jwt-key-mgmt\JWKFactory.php(69): Jose\Component\Core\Util\ECKey::createECKey(‘P-256’, Array) #2 C:\xampp\htdocs\lib\webpush\minishlink\web-push\src\VAPID.php(165): Jose\Component\KeyManagement\JWKFactory::createECKey(‘P-256’) #3 C:\xampp\htdocs\lib\CORE-Install.php(132): Minishlink\WebPush\VAPID::createVapidKeys() #4 C:\xampp\htdocs\index.php(2): require(‘C:\\xampp\\htdocs…’) #5 {main} thrown in C:\xampp\htdocs\lib\webpush\web-token\jwt-core\Util\ECKey.php on line 98
Can you advice?
Thank you
XludodX
As it is, unable to generate keys. Something is wrong with your OpenSSL installation. See section 1B – https://code-boxx.com/php-push-notifications/
I’m trying Storage Boxx on my hosted web server. It works, at least to show the config page. But when I hit “GO” button there is an error with:
Unable to connect to database – SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user ‘Sql635819_2’@’31.11.36.236’ (using password: YES)
I think there something wrong in building the DB_USER name, but no result from searching the code base. In my opinion the problem depends from the fact that siet files are on a IF that’s different from MySql DB. My web server is: 31.11.36.236 and my mysql db is: 62.149.150.182. I’ve specified the ip for database server in the setup form.
Please help me.
Cheers
Luigi Visintin
lib/CORE-Config.php – Section (C) database.
hi is there a demo site for storage boxx project.
also looking to hire developer for projects thanks mike
Sorry, there are no demos for all the PHP/Python/Node projects. Don’t think you will want to hire an overpriced developer and content creator. 😉
https://code-boxx.com/faq/#nodemo
https://code-boxx.com/faq/#hire
We should be able to download a database and the files so we can simply upload them to our server 🙂 and connect. Can you provide a database and the files? 🙂 I have fought for two days, and my server won’t do it.
No idea what you are trying to do here… There’s already an automated installer? All the source files are available for download here and on GitHub? If you want to manually install, see “MANUAL INSTALLATION” above.
P.S. If you have zero experience, I will highly suggest you start with the raw basics or hire your own web developer. Good luck.
When i go on login page, apache response “page not found” after a success installation
EDIT – Whoever encounters the same problem in the future, it’s either:
1)
MOD_REWRITE
is enabled, butAllowOverride
is not properly set.2) SSL issues. Apache is not serving the pages and/or static assets properly.
Will try to add more checks, but fingers crossed. PHP has limited or no access to these Apache settings.