Dynamically generating a QR code with PHP [closed]

Question

It's worth adding that, in addition to the QR codes library posted by @abaumg, Google provides a QR Codes API QR Codes API^{many thanks to @Toukakoukan for the link update}.

To use this , basically:

https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=300x300&cht=qr&chl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&choe=UTF-8

• 300x300 is the size of the QR image you want to generate,
• the chl is the url-encoded string you want to change into a QR code, and
• the choe is the (optional) encoding.

The link, above, gives more detail, but to use it just have the src of an image point to the manipulated value, like so:

<img src="https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=300x300&cht=qr&chl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F&choe=UTF-8" title="Link to Google.com" />

Demo:

The easiest way to generate QR codes with PHP is the phpqrcode library.

The phpqrcode library is really fast to configure and the API documentation is easy to understand.

In addition to abaumg's answer I have attached 2 examples in PHP from http://phpqrcode.sourceforge.net/examples/index.php

1. QR code encoder

first include the library from your local path

include('../qrlib.php');

then to output the image directly as PNG stream do for example:

QRcode::png('your texte here...');

to save the result locally as a PNG image:

$tempDir = EXAMPLE_TMP_SERVERPATH;

$codeContents = 'your message here...';

$fileName = 'qrcode_name.png';

$pngAbsoluteFilePath = $tempDir.$fileName;
$urlRelativeFilePath = EXAMPLE_TMP_URLRELPATH.$fileName;

QRcode::png($codeContents, $pngAbsoluteFilePath); 

2. QR code decoder

See also the zxing decoder:

http://zxing.org/w/decode.jspx

Pretty useful to check the output.

3. List of Data format

A list of data format you can use in your QR code according to the data type :

• Website URL: http://stackoverflow.com (including the protocole http://)
• email address: mailto:[email protected]
• Telephone Number: +16365553344 (including country code)
• SMS Message: smsto:number:message
• MMS Message: mms:number:subject
• YouTube Video: youtube://ID (may work on iPhone, not standardized)

The endroid/QrCode library is easy to use, well maintained, and can be installed using composer. There is also a bundle to use directly with Symfony.

Installing :

$ composer require endroid/qrcode

Usage :

<?php

use Endroid\QrCode\QrCode;

$qrCode = new QrCode();
$qrCode
    ->setText('Life is too short to be generating QR codes')
    ->setSize(300)
    ->setPadding(10)
    ->setErrorCorrection('high')
    ->setForegroundColor(array('r' => 0, 'g' => 0, 'b' => 0, 'a' => 0))
    ->setBackgroundColor(array('r' => 255, 'g' => 255, 'b' => 255, 'a' => 0))
    ->setLabel('Scan the code')
    ->setLabelFontSize(16)
    ->setImageType(QrCode::IMAGE_TYPE_PNG)
;

// now we can directly output the qrcode
header('Content-Type: '.$qrCode->getContentType());
$qrCode->render();

// or create a response object
$response = new Response($qrCode->get(), 200, array('Content-Type' => $qrCode->getContentType()));

qrcode-generator on Github. Simplest script and works like charm.

Pros:

• No third party dependency
• No limitations for the number of QR code generations