[s1mpl3]

Interesting, that's really useful. But, assuming I have MagTek connected via USB to the computer, how does this code "listen" for the swipe? It looks like it can handle parsing the data just fine, but my question is how to get the data from the swipe into the javascript for parsing

[ryduh]

The MagTek reader acts as a USB HID (aka a keyboard). When the cursor focus is put on a text field and you swipe a card, the MagTek device acts as if someone typed each character into the field. Then the javascript detects that and parses it out

[s1mpl3]

omg i see. That makes a lot of sense. Will test this out. Thanks a lot :)