How can you read QR Codes in PHP?

Question

Is there a plain PHP implementation for decoding QR codes?

I have a faux-smartphone. One of those phones that parades as a smartphone but that I can't download any apps for, and I want to create an email service to where I can take a picture of a QR code, MMS it to this email, and the email returns what the QR code contains.

However, the only libraries I've been able to find are in Python (and probably C++), neither of which I can access on my limited hosting environment.

Is there a way to read QR codes using only PHP?

Answer 1

There is only one pure PHP QR code decoder. It's working with GD library, but can use also ImageMagick. This PHP QR code reader is ported from ZXing.

https://github.com/khanamiryan/php-qrcode-detector-decoder

Answer 2

I'm not aware of any pure php decoder. Decoding images like this is pretty processor intensive and doing it in a purely interpreted language is challenging.

zxing (http://code.google.com/p/zxing/) provides a decoder implementation in both Java and C++. In theory, it should be possible to link the C++ library as a php extension, though I don't know anything of the mechanics of that. I've done it for Ruby ...

Moreover, zxing does have an online decoder at http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx. My thinking is that from PHP you can take the image and post it to the webservice and retrieve the decoded data. I don't know the mechanics of making remote web service calls from PHP and how different hosting environments might limit that, though, but it seems reasonable?

Answer 3

If you have the possibility to use a phpextension, php-zbarcode at https://github.com/mkoppanen/php-zbarcode can read qrcodes. It's a wrapper for ZBar from http://zbar.sourceforge.net, which in turn is a LGPL C library for decoding barcodes.

Answer 4

To decode your QR code you have to upload image of QR code and it will show you text inside that code image.

http://www.phpgang.com/how-to-decode-qr-code_344.html

Very easy to do tutorial I hope it helps.

Answer 5

Here is a good example & you can generate online direct QR code too...

there is also php library to implement QR code in your project.

http://phpqrcode.sourceforge.net/