This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Marco Colli
Today many applications use QR codes.
QR codes are used for many different purposes, like tickets, restaurant menus, payments, sharing a contact or a URL, etc.
A QR code may seem magical to non-tech users, but it is actually very simple. QR codes are simply a different way to write text: instead of using the normal alphabet, that is easily read by humans, we use different signs that are easily read by a machine.
Since you can write any text inside a QR code, you can also write a URL for example. URLs are one of the most common contents of QR codes. A mobile device that scans a QR code, reads the text, and finds a URL, may decide to open that link.
For example, if you have a restaurant menu online you can simply take the URL of the menu and convert it into a QR code: in this way users that scan the QR code will open the restaurant menu. That is exactly how a QR code menu works. And indeed this post is based on the work that I have done for BuonMenu, a QR code menu for restaurants built with Ruby on Rails.
The code
We want to build a simple page with Ruby on Rails that given an arbitrary text or a URL as an input, generates the QR code and allows the user to download it.
First of all create a new Rails application (or open an existing one).
Then add this gem:
# Gemfile
gem 'rqrcode'
And run bundle install.
Then create these routes:
# config/routes.rb
controller :pages do
get :qr_code_generator
get :qr_code_download
end
Then the controller:
# app/controllers/pages_controller.rb
class PagesController < ApplicationController
def qr_code_generator; end
def qr_code_download
send_data RQRCode::QRCode.new(params[:content].to_s).as_png(size: 300), type: 'image/png', disposition: 'attachment'
end
end
This is the code of the view:
<%# app/views/pages/qr_code_generator.html.erb %>
<h1>QR code generator</h1>
<%= form_tag :qr_code_download, method: :get do |f| %>
<div class="field">
<%= label_tag 'Text or URL' %>
<%= text_field_tag :content, nil, required: true %>
</div>
<div class="actions">
<%= submit_tag 'Generate QR code' %>
</div>
<% end %>
Basically the view is to display a form where the user can add his text or URL and then it sends a request to qr_code_download which actually generates a PNG for the QR code. The QR code will be downloaded on the user device since we use disposition: 'attachment'.
Finally, if we prefer to display the QR code instead of downloading it, we can use a method similar to qr_code_download but with disposition: 'inline'.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Marco Colli
Marco Colli | Sciencx (2021-08-06T22:43:50+00:00) Building a QR code generator with Ruby on Rails. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2021/08/06/building-a-qr-code-generator-with-ruby-on-rails/
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