This is a wrapper for the ZXing barcode library. It will allow you to read and decode barcode images from Python.

It was originally a "slightly less quick-and-dirty" fork of oostendo/python-zxing, but has since evolved considerably beyond that ancestral package.

Use the Python 3 version of pip (usually invoked via pip3) to install: pip3 install zxing

• You'll neeed to have a recent java binary somewhere in your path. (Tested with OpenJDK v7, v8, v11.)
• pip will automatically download the relevant JAR files for the Java ZXing libraries (currently v3.5.3)

The BarCodeReader class is used to decode images:

>>> import zxing
>>> reader = zxing.BarCodeReader()
>>> print(reader.zxing_version, reader.zxing_version_info)
3.5.1 (3, 5, 1)
>>> barcode = reader.decode("test/barcodes/QR_CODE-easy.png")
>>> print(barcode)
BarCode(raw='This should be QR_CODE', parsed='This should be QR_CODE', path='test/barcodes/QR_CODE-easy.png', format='QR_CODE', type='TEXT', points=[(15.0, 87.0), (15.0, 15.0), (87.0, 15.0), (75.0, 75.0)])

The attributes of the decoded BarCode object are raw, parsed, path, format, type, points, and raw_bits. The list of formats which ZXing can decode is here.

The decode() method accepts an image path or PIL Image object (or list thereof) and takes optional parameters try_harder (boolean), possible_formats (list of formats to consider), and pure_barcode (boolean). If no barcode is found, it returns a False-y BarCode object with all fields except path set to None. If it encounters any other recognizable error from the Java ZXing library, it raises BarCodeReaderException.

The command-line interface can decode images into barcodes and output in either a human-readable or CSV format:

usage: zxing [-h] [-c] [--try-harder] [--pure-barcode] [-V] image [image ...]

Human-readable:

$ zxing /tmp/barcode.png
/tmp/barcode.png
================
  Decoded TEXT barcode in QR_CODE format.
  Raw text:    'Testing 123'
  Parsed text: 'Testing 123'

CSV output (can be opened by LibreOffice or Excel):

$ zxing /tmp/barcode1.png /tmp/barcode2.png /tmp/barcode3.png
Filename,Format,Type,Raw,Parsed
/tmp/barcode1.png,CODE_128,TEXT,Testing 123,Testing 123
/tmp/barcode2.png,QR_CODE,URI,http://zxing.org,http://zxing.org
/tmp/barcode3.png,QR_CODE,TEXT,"This text, ""Has stuff in it!"" Wow⏎Yes it does!","This text, ""Has stuff in it!"" Wow⏎Yes it does!"

LGPLv3