This tutorial will guide you through creating barcodes using Python. Barcodes are widely used to automate the transfer of product information (such as price, name, and manufacturer) from a product to a digital system such as a POS (Point of Sale).
To proceed further, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of what a barcode is.
What is a Barcode?
A barcode is an optical, machine-readable representation of data that can easily be scanned. They are used in various industries, such as retail for product tracking, logistics for inventory management, etc.
Generating Barcode in Python
Python offers some libraries to generate barcodes. In this tutorial, we will use the python-barcode library due to its ease of use and support for various barcode types.
Here is a simple Python program to generate a barcode:
Python Program to Generate Barcode
#Importing the required module
from barcode import EAN13
# The number to be converted into a barcode
number = '5901234123457'
# Generating the barcode
my_code = EAN13(number)
# Saving the barcode as an image
my_code.save('ean13_barcode_image')In the above program, we first import the required modules. We use the EAN13 class from the barcode module to generate the barcode.
Then we define the number that is to be converted to barcode. Note that the EAN13 format requires a 13-digit number.
After defining the number, we generate the barcode using the EAN13 class and save it as an image using the save method.
Program Output:
The output of this program is an image file named 'ean13_barcode_image.svg' in the same directory as your Python file. This image represents the barcode of the number we have provided.
Also, note that barcode creation has specific standards depending on the barcode type. For example, EAN13 requires a 13-digit number.
This is a basic tutorial on generating barcodes with Python. You can explore more complex use cases according to your needs. For example, you can modify the program to generate barcodes for a list of numbers or read product information from a database to generate barcodes.
Install python-barcode
The 'python-barcode' Python library can be installed using pip (package manager for Python). The following command installs the package:
pip install python-barcode