Using PHP for thumb scanning device

Question

I am really excited about sharing my experience on Stack Overflow. I have a strong passion for technology. My stronger area is PHP, but now i got a small work in which i have to let the user log in using a Thumb Scanner device, not username and password. My website is hosted on a hosting site obviously.

I did some findings and i came to know of "Digital Persona 4500". I know PHP is a scripting language and i can not directly communicate with the thumb scanning device, thumb scanning devices have their SDK's.

So my question is: How can i make it happen? i have two systems where two thumb scanning devices are placed. How can i make them interact with the server?

Answer 1

You can not implement it using PHP.
PHP is hosted in server while website is displayed in client side. Communication with thumb scanning device has to be done in client side.

As far as I know it can not be done using HTML5, so you are left with 3 options

1. Flash
2. Java
3. COM (Windows only

I am not sure about Flash and COM but you can definitely use JAVA to interact with thumb scanning device. It will send back the scanned information to server which can be used to validate user.

Note that validation is server side and can be written in PHP

Answer 2

Not possible in PHP right now, I am not sure about future enhancement in PHP ;)