QR Codes with Python
In this article, we’ll be exploring how to use Python’s library Qrcode to generate QR Codes based on a set of data (string, URL, binary, etc…)
♦ The Basics
First of all, we have to install the Python interpreter (version >3.0). If you already have it installed you can skip this part, if not, you can do so via the Python official website.
After the installation, we can move on to installing the qrcode library. We can do so via the Python Package Installer “pip” on our command prompt:
pip install qrcode[pil]or if you’re using macOS, then run
pip install qrcode"[pil]"The
[pil]will tell pip to also install the Pillow library, which will be used by qrcode to generate and save an image of the QR Code.
This should automatically install qrcode, which we can check by running
pip check qrcode♦ Generating the QR Code
Now that we have everything set up, we can create our python script using any editor as long as we use the .py file extension (for this demo I’ll be creating mine as generator.py). On it we must do 2 things:
- Import qrcode
- Generate our QR Code data
☼ Converting our QR Code into an Image
Now that we have our data finally converted into a QR Code inside our qr object, we can start working on converting this code into an image that can be shared and read with compatible devices (like you’re smartphone i.e).
- If you are looking to save your newly generated QR Code to a custom path, you can add these steps
Now if everything went smoothly, you have generated your own custom QR Code! :D
You can also experiment with other properties of the qrcode library, such as styling your image or saving it as .svg; read more about this at the qrcode repository.
As always, thank you for reading through this tutorial! If you want to take a further look on my personal take of this algorithm, you can read this QR Code
