Matrix (2D) Barcodes

In This Topic

QR Code
PDF417
See Also

A matrix code, also termed a 2D barcode or simply a 2D code, is a two-dimensional way to represent information. The advantage of 2D vs 1D barcodes is that they can represent significantly more data per unit area.

Nevron .NET Vision provides full support for two of the most popular 2D barcode symbologies - QR Code and PDF417. To create 2D barcode widgets you should create an instance of the NMatrixBarcode class and set its symbology and text.

QR Code

QR code can encode up to 7089 characters depending on their type (digits only, capital latin letters and digits, binary). Nevron's barcode component automatically analyzes the type of characters you want to encode as a QR code and determines the best encoding algorithms bases on this analysis.

A typical QR code looks like this:

The large balck squares at the corners are used by QR code scanners to determine whether the QR code is rotated and if yes by how much. This greatly improves scanning speed. The little square in between contain the actual data. The more data you want to encode, the more little squares will be needed to encode it and the bigger the QR code version (can be from 1 to 40). Nevron .NET Vision automatically determines the version of teh QR code based on the amount of data to encode.

QR codes are widely used today. They are displayed on many different devices and printed on all kinds of surfaces, which unfortunately may lead to dmaging the structure of the QR code image. That is where the error correction features of the QR code come in handy. Nevron .NET Vision supports all 4 levels of QR code error correction and you can set the desired level through the ErrorCorrection property of the QR code.

Level L (Low) - 7% of codewords can be restored. This is the default value used by Nevron QR codes.
Level M (Medium) - 15% of codewords can be restored.
Level Q (Quartile) - 25% of codewords can be restored.
Level H (High) - 30% of codewords can be restored.

The following code snippet shows how to create the QR code barcode widget shown above:

Create QR Code widget	Copy Code
NMatrixBarcode barcode = new NMatrixBarcode(); barcode.Symbology = ENMatrixBarcodeSymbology.QrCode; barcode.Text = "https://www.nevron.com";

PDF417

PDF417 is a popular 2D barcode format that is used in a variety of applications primarily transport, identification cards, and inventory management.

This PDF417 barcode can be created with the following piece of code:

Create PDF417 Barcode	Copy Code
NMatrixBarcode barcode = new NMatrixBarcode(); barcode.Symbology = ENMatrixBarcodeSymbology.Pdf417; barcode.Text = "Nevron";