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?

Solution 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

Solution 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?

Solution 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.

Comments

[stevendesu]

Nice find with the zxing. I'm honestly looking into it and interpreting a QR Code in PHP, if possible, would be damned silly. Though PHP does have routines for checking the value of a bitmap pixel, it's very unintuitive and is generally used for averaging colors over and area or similar simple mathematical techniques, not finding patterns. Pattern matching would just be so complicated it's meaningless.

[Navarr]

I'm sure I can find a way to utilize this with my PHP. Thanks a lot :) This is pretty much exactly what I was looking for in one way or another. :3

[Navarr]

Kudos. This is better than sending to ZXing.

[Pierre de LESPINAY]

This wrapper seemed promising but now seems abandoned, isn't it ? Has anyone picked up the flame or succeded making it work ?

[Navarr]

I had always considered doing this myself but never found it worth the time tradeoff. You're amazing.

[emmanuel honore]

@AshotKhanamiryan is there documentation available? I'm looking for debugging / error messages...