Easily encode your data into a 2D barcode using the PDF417 format.

Licensed under the MIT License, see LICENSE.

Install using pip:

pip install pdf417gen

The pdf417gen command can be used to generate a barcode from commandline. It takes the input either as an argument or from stdin.

# Show help
pdf417gen encode --help

# Encode given text and display the barcode
pdf417gen encode "Beautiful is better than ugly"

# Encode given text and save barcode to a file (extension determines format)
pdf417gen encode -o barcode.png "Explicit is better than implicit"

# Input from a file
pdf417gen encode < input.txt

# Piped input
python -c "import this" | pdf417gen encode

Creating bar codes is done in two steps:

• Encode a string to a list of code words using encode()
• Render the barcode using one of the rendering functions: render_image(), render_svg().

Usage overview:

from pdf417gen import encode, render_image, render_svg

# Some data to encode
text = """Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated."""

# Convert to code words
codes = encode(text)

# Generate barcode as image
image = render_image(codes)  # Pillow Image object
image.save('barcode.jpg')

# Generate barcode as SVG
svg = render_svg(codes)  # ElementTree object
svg.write("barcode.svg")

Supports strings (unicode in py2) and byte arrays (str in py2):

# These two inputs encode to the same code words
encode(u"love 💔")
encode(b"love \xf0\x9f\x92\x94")

# Default encoding is UTF-8, but you can specify your own
encode(u"love 💔", encoding="utf-8")

The first step is to encode your data to a list of code words.

encode(data, columns=6, security_level=2˙)

The bar code size can be customized by defining the number of columns used to render the data, between 1 and 30, the default value is 6. A bar code can have a maximum of 90 rows, so for larger data sets you may need to increase the number of columns to decrease the rows count.

codes = encode(text, columns=12)
image = render_image(codes)
image.show()

Increasing the security level will produce stronger (and more numerous) error correction codes, making the bar code larger, but less prone to corruption. The security level can range from 0 to 8, and procuces 2^(level+1) error correction code words, meaning level 0 produces 2 code words and level 8 produces 512. The default security level is 2.

codes = encode(text, columns=12, security_level=6)
image = render_image(codes)
image.show()

The render_image function takes the following options:

• scale - module width, in pixels (default: 3)
• ratio - module height to width ratio (default: 3)
• padding - image padding, in pixels (default: 20)
• fg_color - foreground color (default: #000000)
• bg_color - background color (default: #FFFFFF)

The function returns a Pillow Image object containing the barcode.

Colors can be specified as hex codes or using HTML color names.

codes = encode(text, columns=3)
image = render_image(codes, scale=5, ratio=2, padding=5, fg_color="Indigo", bg_color="#ddd")
image.show()

The render_svg function takes the following options:

• scale - module width, in pixels (default: 3)
• ratio - module height to width ratio (default: 3)
• padding - image padding, in pixels (default: 20)
• color - foreground color (default: #000000)

The function returns a ElementTree object containing the barcode in SVG format.

Unlike render_image, this function does not take a background color option. The background is left transparent.

codes = encode(text, columns=3)
svg = render_svg(codes, scale=5, ratio=2, color="Seaweed")
svg.write('barcode.svg')

## See also

• pdf417-php - a PHP implementation
• golang-pdf417 - a Go implementation