David Kimura PRO said about 8 years ago on Bar Code Reader with Rails :

I'll definitely look into this, but it does appear to be something a bit more application specific.

My initial thoughts would be to use an android device and a javascript library. Since iOS does not allow for direct access to the camera with getUserMedia, you would have different functionality between platforms.

Were you thinking of a USB Barcode scanner or something similar? I wonder if they make WiFi barcode scanners that can make an post to a web API.