How to generate a EAN-13 barcode as a PNG file in Python

Who really has the time to manually code in functionality for barcode generation? What if there was a much easier way, one that would allow us to just instantly have our solution implemented? I’m going to show you just such a way. Here goes.

Our method will involve the use of an API, so let’s install its client now:

pip install cloudmersive-barcode-api-client

And now here is the function we will be using from our API, generate_barcode_ean13:

from __future__ import print_function
import time
import cloudmersive_barcode_api_client
from cloudmersive_barcode_api_client.rest import ApiException
from pprint import pprint
# Configure API key authorization: Apikey
configuration = cloudmersive_barcode_api_client.Configuration()
configuration.api_key['Apikey'] = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
# Uncomment below to setup prefix (e.g. Bearer) for API key, if needed
# configuration.api_key_prefix['Apikey'] = 'Bearer'
# create an instance of the API class
api_instance = cloudmersive_barcode_api_client.GenerateBarcodeApi(cloudmersive_barcode_api_client.ApiClient(configuration))
value = 'value_example' # str | Barcode value to generate from
try:
# Validates and generate a EAN-13 barcode as a PNG file, a type of 1D barcode
api_response = api_instance.generate_barcode_ean13(value)
pprint(api_response)
except ApiException as e:
print("Exception when calling GenerateBarcodeApi->generate_barcode_ean13: %s\n" % e)

And now we input our value, which will be transferred to the API and returned to us in PNG form as the completed barcode. There now, wasn’t that easy?