LaTeX Package to generate QR codes?

Question

I would like to be able to generate QR barcodes in my LaTeX documents, and I'm having a hard time finding a solution. The use would be a command such as

\qr[1in]{Your text to be QR encoded here}

The optional argument would be the width of the square. I'd be using this to put a barcode on each page of an exam for my students, so that the assignments could be scanned and sorted electronically once they hand them in.

Anyone know of such a package? I don't mind using an external script (e.g., python) to generate a graphic that I could include.

Answer 1

The pst-barcode package will work as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pst-barcode}
\begin{document}
  \begin{pspicture}(1in,1in)
    \psbarcode{test string}{}{qrcode}
  \end{pspicture}
\end{document}

The empty {} between the string to encode, {test string}, and the barcode type, {qrcode}, can contain options that are detailed in the package documentation (but which, by definition, are not needed).

NB: This package relies on pstricks, which of course uses postscript, so you can't use pdflatex to compile. Creating a .dvi or .ps and converting it to .pdf works perfectly well though.

Answer 2

I made such a package in plainTeX ... it has a bit different interface. Your interface would have for example problems to include braces in the QRcode. The source code is not easy to understand as the math behind it is rather complicated, but I hope the initial comments explain usage well enough. See http://ktiml.mff.cuni.cz/~maj/QRcode.TeX. There could be changes in the file in the future, but current version seems to work well.

Answer 3

This isn't really what you're looking for, but an easy way to generate QR codes is with Google's chart tool: http://code.google.com/intl/en/apis/chart/infographics/docs/qr_codes.html

You can then include the image using the graphicx package.

Answer 4

Not TeX-related, but since you inquired about a Python script...

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Generates QR code from given text using Google charts API.
import urllib2
import sys

# change those to your heart's content. See http://code.google.com/apis/chart/docs/gallery/qr_codes.html for more info
ENCODING='utf-8'
IMAGE_WIDTH=200
IMAGE_HEIGHT=200

def make_magic_url(text):
    # spaces in the text should be replaced with "+". probably other control symbols need to be handled in special way.
    return 'http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=%dx%d&cht=qr&choe=%s&chl=%s' %(IMAGE_WIDTH, IMAGE_HEIGHT, ENCODING, text.replace(" ", "+"))

def makeQR(text, dest):
    print make_magic_url(text)
    myfig=urllib2.urlopen(make_magic_url(text))
    output=open(dest, 'wb')
    output.write(myfig.read())
    output.close()

text=sys.argv[1]
dest=sys.argv[2]
makeQR(text, dest)

Save this as fetchqr.py, or some such. Usage is simple:

python fetchqr.py 'http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1429/latex-package-to-generate-qr-codes' '/tmp/myfig.png'

And you'd get something like:

This works on Python 2.6 under Windows, but I imagine it shouldn't be a a problem with older Python versions. Not sure about Python 3.x though.

If you're using something like a Makefile to run your project, then you should be able to generate those on the fly as needed -- maybe create a file with stuff to QR-code, then run all the entries through the grinder in one go.

The code is free for the taking.

Answer 5

http://www.tug.org/pipermail/texhax/2009-September/013160.html should be a help for using pstricks in general