Generating and Decoding QR Codes in PHP

With the widespread use of smartphones, QR codes have become a practical way to transmit information, and this article shows how to generate and decode QR codes using PHP functions.

1. Generate QR Code

In PHP you can use the QRCode class from the open‑source qrcode.php library. After including the library, the QRCode::png() function creates a QR code image.

require 'qrcode.php';

$text = 'https://example.com'; // QR code content
$filename = 'qrcode.png'; // output file name

QRCode::png($text, $filename); // generate QR code image

The code first includes qrcode.php, defines the QR code content in $text and the output file name in $filename, then calls QRCode::png() to produce the image.

2. Decode QR Code

Decoding a QR code in PHP can be done with the imagecreatefrompng() function to load the image and the ZXing library’s decode() method to read the embedded data.

require 'qrcode.php';
require 'zxing.php';

$filename = 'qrcode.png'; // QR code image path

$im = imagecreatefrompng($filename); // create image resource
$decoded_text = ZxingDecoder::decode($im); // decode QR code
imagedestroy($im); // free resource

echo $decoded_text; // output decoded result

The script includes both qrcode.php and zxing.php, loads the PNG file, decodes it with ZxingDecoder::decode(), releases the image resource, and prints the decoded text.

These examples demonstrate the basic steps for generating and decoding QR codes in PHP, which can be further customized for real‑world applications.