Java: Simple QR Code Generator Example – Now you Could have Narrow Border

Last updated on April 30th, 2017 by App Shah 45 Comments

Scan this: You will be redirected to https://crunchify.com

QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response Code) is the trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional barcode) first designed for the automotive industry in Japan. Bar codes are optical machine-readable labels attached to items that record information related to the item. Initially patented, its patent holder has chosen not to exercise those rights. Recently, the QR Code system has become popular outside the automotive industry due to its fast readability and greater storage capacity compared to standard UPC barcodes.

The code consists of black modules (square dots) arranged in a square grid on a white background. ZXING is a Multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library with clients for Android, Java. It is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library implemented in Java, with ports to other languages.

Our focus is on using the built-in camera on mobile phones to scan and decode barcodes on the device, without communicating with a server. However the project can be used to encode and decode barcodes on desktops and servers as well. Here is a simple Java Code which generates QR code for you.

package crunchify.com.tutorial;

import java.awt.Color;

import java.awt.Graphics2D;

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;

import java.io.File;

import java.io.IOException;

import java.util.EnumMap;

import java.util.Map;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

import com.google.zxing.BarcodeFormat;

import com.google.zxing.EncodeHintType;

import com.google.zxing.WriterException;

import com.google.zxing.common.BitMatrix;

import com.google.zxing.qrcode.QRCodeWriter;

import com.google.zxing.qrcode.decoder.ErrorCorrectionLevel;

/**

* @author Crunchify.com

* Updated: 03/20/2016 - added code to narrow border size

public class CrunchifyQRCode {

// Tutorial: http://zxing.github.io/zxing/apidocs/index.html

public static void main(String[] args) {

String myCodeText = "https://crunchify.com/";

String filePath = "/Users/appshah/Documents/CrunchifyQR.png";

int size = 250;

String fileType = "png";

File myFile = new File(filePath);

try {

Map<EncodeHintType, Object> hintMap = new EnumMap<EncodeHintType, Object>(EncodeHintType.class);

hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.CHARACTER_SET, "UTF-8");

// Now with zxing version 3.2.1 you could change border size (white border size to just 1)

hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.MARGIN, 1); /* default = 4 */

hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.ERROR_CORRECTION, ErrorCorrectionLevel.L);

QRCodeWriter qrCodeWriter = new QRCodeWriter();

BitMatrix byteMatrix = qrCodeWriter.encode(myCodeText, BarcodeFormat.QR_CODE, size,

size, hintMap);

int CrunchifyWidth = byteMatrix.getWidth();

BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(CrunchifyWidth, CrunchifyWidth,

BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);

image.createGraphics();

Graphics2D graphics = (Graphics2D) image.getGraphics();

graphics.setColor(Color.WHITE);

graphics.fillRect(0, 0, CrunchifyWidth, CrunchifyWidth);

graphics.setColor(Color.BLACK);

for (int i = 0; i < CrunchifyWidth; i++) {

for (int j = 0; j < CrunchifyWidth; j++) {

if (byteMatrix.get(i, j)) {

graphics.fillRect(i, j, 1, 1);

}

ImageIO.write(image, fileType, myFile);

} catch (WriterException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

} catch (IOException e) {

e.printStackTrace();

}

System.out.println("\n\nYou have successfully created QR Code.");

}

Output: (Scan it by yourself)

Which library do I have to download?

If you have Maven project then include this dependency.

<groupId>com.google.zxing</groupId>

</dependency>

OR Download .jar file manually

Step-1:

Download link.

Step-2

Once you download it you have to include it into your project’s classpath. How to add .jar file to Project Build Path in Eclipse.

Would love to know what you think. Chime in and share it as a comment. Don’t forget to share this guide!

About App Shah

Hello & Good Day. I'm an Engineer by profession, Blogger by passion & Founder of Crunchify, LLC, the largest free blogging & technical resource site for beginners. Love SEO, SaaS, #webperf, WordPress, Java. With more than 14 millions pageviews/month, Crunchify has changed the life of over thousands of individual around the globe teaching Java & Web Tech for FREE. Get latest update on and .

Salman Farish

Hi i am in need of qr code generator for java 1.5. Zxing is supported for 1.7/1.6.
Can you please suggest any workaround ?
- App Shah
  
  Hi Salman – not sure about it. I will check on it. By the way – I would strongly suggest to upgrade to JDK 1.7+.
Nikku

How to generate QR code with geo location in it?
- App Shah
  
  Hi Nikku – ZXing Core doesn’t provide QR code with geo tagging. There are few online tools available but not sure how to do it in Java. I’ll explore this option in the future and will update.
Dendi Nuryana

im sorry , mine is still error , can you tell me where im i wrong ?
- App Shah
  
  Could you try cleaning your project? Seems like minor dependency issue only. Also, please send me error message you are getting. From above screenshot I couldn’t see error message.
Dendi Nuryana

hi this is a really nice example , but can you leave me a direct link to download the library , because on that link i can’t found where to click download , ty
- App Shah
  
  Hi Dendi – Please click on Download (JAR) link. PFA screenshot.
Stefan Retter

Hi! Does anybody know how to get a group selector (FNC) into the Barcode Data?

Thanks
Jmp Jmp

Nice Example with step by step guide.Excellent bro.
- App Shah
  
  Thank you. Happy coding.
Jackson

Hi, i am new to coding. May i know where to paste those above code? im currently using eclipse. will you be able to share screenshot of where to paste the code to? thanks!
- App Shah
  
  Hi Jackson – try creating new Class and provide name as “CrunchifyQRCode”.
Carlos Garcia

Nice Example, for removing the border add this line:
hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.MARGIN, -1);
- App Shah
  
  Thanks Carlos. I’ve updated above code with version 3.2.1 and made few more changes. It should work now.
Back Packer

Thank you !
Kashif

Hi , I have used API for 1 application in WAS 7.0, It works great But when i use it for other app which is in WAS 6.1, I face an error, i feel it is not compatible with Java5. PLease help, what i can do to make it run on WAS 6.1 (java 5).
Thanks
Martin

Tested for javafx -> works fine, too! Thanks, brother!
Tophman

Awesome code!

Observation: I noticed that there’s a large white border around the generated image.
Conclusion: This is added by either the BitMatrix.getWidth() or QRCodeWriter.encode() methods.
Question: Is there a way to reduce or remove this 25-pixel border?
- App Shah
  
  Hi Tophman – sorry for late reply. Yeah. Let me update above tutorial with narrow border. In most cases wide border doesn’t required.
  - Vikas
    
    Hi,
    
    It works great, but one question though, did you update your code for narrow border? I still get a big border.
    - App Shah
      
      Hi Vikas – not yet. Will try to do that during weekend.
    - Vikas
      
      Thanks, will wait for that update.
    - App Shah
      Hi Vikas – I’ve just updated tutorial and updated border size to just 1. Default was 4. Here are the changes I’ve made:
      
      Updated ZXing .lib to version 3.2.1 and modified below code:
      
      Map hintMap = new EnumMap(EncodeHintType.class); hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.CHARACTER_SET, "UTF-8"); // Now with zxing version 3.2.1 you could change border size (white border size to just 1) hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.MARGIN, 1); /* default = 4 */ hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.ERROR_CORRECTION, ErrorCorrectionLevel.L);
      
      Also updated code above completely. Please use latest code. Hope that works.
    - Vikas
      
      Wonderful, Thanks a lot. I will update my code accordingly.
  - Vikas
    
    Hi App Shah,
    
    Great code, works well. I am still getting a big border around the image. Is there any way to reduce it.
  - Tophman
    
    Much obliged! 😉
- App Shah
  
  Hi Tophman – i’ve just updated code. Please try now.
Nsekwa Kemsley

hi, the code runs and output:
run:
QR Code image created successfully!
Data read from QR Code: Hello World!
BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 3 seconds)

now i want to ask where i can view the created image? because thats all the outpt i gt from the run.
thanks in advance
- App Shah
  
  Hi Nsekwa – you could get image located at below path
  
  If mac: /Users//Documents/eclipsewp/CrunchifyQR.png”;
  If windows: provide your own path like: c:\temp\
Herchi

cannot resolve symbol ‘BufferedImage’

“import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;” doesn’t exist in android. a pity
- App Shah
  
  Hmm. interesting. The Java AWT classes contain native code, so unless someone ports that native code to Android, you are out of luck. I believe, Android has its own graphics libraries (android . graphics)
Eric Soh

Why is there error? please help >< Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException

at java.util.Hashtable.put(Unknown Source)

at CrunchifyQRCode.main(CrunchifyQRCode.java:32)

My line 32 is : hintMap.put(EncodeHintType.ERROR_CORRECTION, ErrorCorrectionLevel.L);
- App Shah
  
  Can you help check if zxing jar file loaded successfully?
bobbell2

Hello,i find a sample code of how to generate qr qode in java class,but i am not professional in this files,can anyone tell me is this code available?

Sample code:()

public static void main(String[] args)
{

BarCode barcode = new BarCode(http://www.keepautomation.com/products/java_barcode/barcodes/qrcode.html);

barcode.setCodeToEncode(“123456789”);
barcode.setSymbology(IBarCode.QRCODE);
barcode.setQrCodeDataMode(IBarCode.QR_MODE_AUTO);
barcode.setQrCodeEcl(IBarCode.QR_ECL_L);
barcode.setQrCodeVersion(1);

try
{ barcode.draw(“c://qrcode.gif”);

}
catch (Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
klyd

I put it on lotus notes database and it works thanks bro it was really helpful 🙂
- App Shah
  
  Awesome. Glad it worked for you.
- App Shah
  
  Glad it worked for you.
- Sam Sirry
  
  Hello Klyd.. I’m very weak with Java, and when I tried to implement the QR generator in a sample Notes Agent I got a handful of errors, which I couldn’t fix (yet). Could you please help by sharing a sample code that can be run in a Notes Java Agent?
- krisi
  
  Hi klyd.i am writing a lotus agent for creating QR code,i am facing lot of errors.can please send a sample notes agent with QR generator.thank you
Hughes

Build qr code generator in Java using qr code font encoder for Java class library,
http://www.keepautomation.com/font_tools/2d_qrcode_encoder/java_class_library.html
- App Shah
  
  Awesome Hughes.. Thanks for sharing QR Code library.. It’s great..
- JonyGreen
  
  I want a qrcode scanner, but I can’t find a good one in Java.
Franklin Barbery

Can you explain the meaning of graphics.fillRect(0, 0, iCrunchWidth, iCrunchWidth);??
- App Shah
  
  it will just fill rectangle with that dimension..