Generate a BARCODE for a Product

Imagine if you could generate a barcode for each of your products… Well, that’s easy!

The previous post focused on QR codes.

Final result with both Barcodes and QR for each product:

There difference between generating QRcodes and BARcodes is very minor.

But for Barcodes we will use another gem - https://github.com/toretore/barby.

We generated QR codes for the product URL. We will generate Barcodes for the product name.

Installation #

console

bundle add barby
bundle add chunky_png

app/models/product.rb

  has_one_attached :barcode

  after_create :generate_code
  def generate_code
    GenerateBarcodeService.new(self).call
  end

app/services/generate_barcode_service.rb

class GenerateBarcodeService
  attr_reader :product

  def initialize(product)
    @product = product
  end

  require 'barby'
  require 'barby/barcode/code_128'
  require 'barby/outputter/ascii_outputter'
  require 'barby/outputter/png_outputter'

  def call
    barcode = Barby::Code128B.new(product.title)

    # chunky_png required for THIS action
    png = Barby::PngOutputter.new(barcode).to_png

    image_name = SecureRandom.hex

    IO.binwrite("tmp/#{image_name}.png", png.to_s)

    blob = ActiveStorage::Blob.create_after_upload!(
      io: File.open("tmp/#{image_name}.png"),
      filename: image_name,
      content_type: 'png'
    )

    product.barcode.attach(blob)
  end
end