Python on Blog | Jonas Neubert

The Best Python Packages for Reading Barcodes

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Three years ago I published a blog post on how to generate barcodes using Python. It’s one of the most visited posts on the blog! Occasionally a reader emails to ask: “But what if I want to read/decode/scan¹ a barcode, not write it?”

Here is the answer:

Don’t use Python for Barcode Decoding!

You really shouldn’t be using pure Python to decode barcodes from images or videos or, worse, from camera streams.

The Best Python Packages for Generating Barcodes

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Barcodes are a cheap and ubiquitous way to add machine-readable information to an object. I think of barcodes as the real-world equivalent of browser cookies: For example, when you arrive at airport departures, the airline hands you a boarding pass with a barcode (the cookie). From that point onward you’re asked to show your barcode at every interaction: at security, the duty-free shop, and the boarding gate. And just like the information stored in browser cookies, the information in barcodes isn’t in plain sight but easily made visible.

Publishing your First PyPI Package by/for the Absolute Beginner

Wed, 13 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The process for packaging and publishing Python packages is subject to much community discussion and frequent change. That leads to a lot of outdated information about it floating around the interwebs.

As part of my PyCon 2017 talk preparations I wrote a driver for a barcode reader that was part of the live demo in my presentation. Having never published a package to PyPI before¹, I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn about the Python Package Index (PyPI) and how to use it.