QR Code encoding and decoding using zxing

Question

Okay, so I'm going to take the off chance that someone here has used zxing before. I'm developing a Java application, and one of the things it needs to do is encode a byte array of data into a QR Code and then decode it at a later time.

Here's an example of what my encoder looks like:

byte[] b = {0x48, 0x45, 0x4C, 0x4C, 0x4F};
//convert the byte array into a UTF-8 string
String data;
try {
    data = new String(b, "UTF8");
}
catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
 //the program shouldn't be able to get here
 return;
}

//get a byte matrix for the data
ByteMatrix matrix;
com.google.zxing.Writer writer = new QRCodeWriter();
try {
 matrix = writer.encode(data, com.google.zxing.BarcodeFormat.QR_CODE, width, height);
}
catch (com.google.zxing.WriterException e) {
 //exit the method
 return;
}

//generate an image from the byte matrix
int width = matrix.getWidth(); 
int height = matrix.getHeight(); 

byte[][] array = matrix.getArray();

//create buffered image to draw to
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);

//iterate through the matrix and draw the pixels to the image
for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) { 
 for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) { 
  int grayValue = array[y][x] & 0xff; 
  image.setRGB(x, y, (grayValue == 0 ? 0 : 0xFFFFFF));
 }
}

//write the image to the output stream
ImageIO.write(image, "png", outputStream);

The beginning byte array in this code is just used to test it. The actual byte data will be varied.

Here's what my decoder looks like:

//get the data from the input stream
BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(inputStream);

//convert the image to a binary bitmap source
LuminanceSource source = new BufferedImageLuminanceSource(image);
BinaryBitmap bitmap = new BinaryBitmap(new HybridBinarizer(source));

//decode the barcode
QRCodeReader reader = new QRCodeReader();

Result result;
try {
 result = reader.decode(bitmap, hints);
} catch (ReaderException e) {
 //the data is improperly formatted
 throw new MCCDatabaseMismatchException();
}

byte[] b = result.getRawBytes();
System.out.println(ByteHelper.convertUnsignedBytesToHexString(result.getText().getBytes("UTF8")));
System.out.println(ByteHelper.convertUnsignedBytesToHexString(b));

convertUnsignedBytesToHexString(byte) is a method which converts an array of bytes in a string of hexadecimal characters.

When I try to run these two blocks of code together, this is the output:

48454c4c4f
202b0b78cc00ec11ec11ec11ec11ec11ec11ec

Clearly the text is being encoded, but the actual bytes of data are completely off. Any help would be appreciated here.

Thanks,

helixed

Answer 1

So for future reference for anybody who doesn't want to do two days of searching on the internet to figure this out, when you encode byte arrays into QR Codes, you have to use the ISO-8859-1 character set, not UTF-8.

Answer 2

If you really need to encode UTF-8, you can try prepending the unicode byte order mark. I have no idea how widespread the support for this method is, but ZXing at least appears to support it: http://code.google.com/p/zxing/issues/detail?id=103

I've been reading up on QR Mode recently, and I think I've seen the same practice mentioned elsewhere, but I've not the foggiest where.