/ 
Image-DecodeQR-WeChat-0.9
River stage zero No dependents
/ Image::DecodeQR::WeChat

NAME

Image::DecodeQR::WeChat - Decode QR code(s) from images using the OpenCV/WeChat library via XS

VERSION

Version 0.9

SYNOPSIS

This module provides a Perl interface to the OpenCV/WeChat QR code decoder via XS code. OpenCV/WeChat library uses CNN to do this with pre-trained models.

This module has been tested by myself with OpenCV v4.5.5 and Perl v5.32 on Linux. But check the CPANtesters matrix on the left for all the tests done on this module.

The library is relatively successful even for rotated codes. It remains to be tested on the minimum size ofthe code images (60px in my case).

Here is some code to get you started:

    # this ensures that both input params can contain utf8 strings
    # but also results (somehow but beyond me)
    use Image::DecodeQR::WeChat;

    # this will be fixed, right now params are hardoded in XS code
    my $ret = Image::DecodeQR::WeChat::decode_xs(
	# the input image containing one or more QR-codes
	'an-input-image.png',

	# the dir with model parameters required by the library.
	# Model files come with this Perl module and are curtesy of WeChat
	# which is part of OpenCV contrib packages.
        # They are installed with this module and their default location
        # is given by Image::DecodeQR::WeChat::modelsdir()
        # Alternatively, you specify here your own model files:
	Image::DecodeQR::WeChat::modelsdir(),

	# outbase for all output files, optional
	# if more than one QR-codes were detected then an index will
	# be appended to the filename. And there will be png image files
	# containing the portion of the image which was detected
	# and there will be txt files with QR-code text (payload)
	# and its bounding box. And there will be an overall
	# text file with all payloads. This last one will be
	# printed to STDOUT if no outbase was specified:
	'output.detected',

	# verbosity level. 0:mute, 1:C code messages, 10:C+XS code
	10,

	# display results in a window with QR codes found highlighted
	# make sure you have an interactive shell and GUI
	1,

	# dump image and metadata to files for each QR code detected
	# only if outbase was specified
	1,
    );
    die "failed" unless $ret;
    # we got back an array-of-2-arrays
    # * one contains the QR-code-text (called payload)
    # * one contains bounding boxes, one for each payload
    # we have as many payloads and bounding boxes as
    # are the QR-codes detected (some may have been skipped)
    
    my ($payloads, $boundingboxes) = @$ret;
    for (0..$#$payloads){
      print "Payload got: '".$payloads->[$_]
        ."' bbox: @{$boundingboxes->[$_]}"
        .".\n";
    }

    # The above decode_xs() expects all parameters to be present
    # while decode() below takes a hash of params and fills the
    # missing params with defaults. Then it calls decode_xs()
    # So, it is still calling XS code but via a Perl sub
    # The important bit is that the modelsdir is filled in automatically
    # rather than the user looking for it
    my $ret = Image::DecodeQR::WeChat::decode({
        # these are required
        'input' => 'input.jpg',
        'outbase' => 'outs',
        # these are optional and have defaults
        #'modelsdir' => '...', # use it only if you have your own models
        #'verbosity' => 0,
        #'graphicaldisplayresult'' => 0,
        #'dumpqrimagestofile' => 0,
    });
    die "failed" unless $ret;
    my ($payloads, $boundingboxes) = @$ret;
    for (0..$#$payloads){
      print "Payload got: '".$payloads->[$_]
        ."' bbox: @{$boundingboxes->[$_]}"
        .".\n";
    }

    # pre-trained models location (installed with this module)
    print "my models are in here: ".Image::DecodeQR::WeChat::modelsdir()."\n"

    # returns 1 or 0 when OpenCV was compiled with highgui or not
    # and supports GUI display like imshow() which displays an image in a window
    my $has_highgui_support = opencv_has_highgui_xs();

This code calls functions and methods from OpenCV/WeChat library (written in C++) for decoding one or more QR codes found embedded in images. It's just that: a very thin wrapper of a C++ library written in XS. It only interfaces the OpenCV/WeChat library for QR code decoding.

It can detect multiple QR codes embeded in a single image. And has been successfully tested with as small sizes as 60 x 60 px.

The payload(s) (the QR-code's text) are returned back as an ARRAYref.

Optionally, it can output the portion of the input image corresponding to each QR-code, its bounding box and the payload in separate files, useful for debugging and identification when multiple QR codes exist in a single input image.

Following this code as an example, it will be trivial to interface other parts of the OpenCV library:

Ιδού πεδίον δόξης λαμπρόν
   (behold a glorious field of glory)

EXPORT

  • decode()

  • decode_xs()

  • modelsdir()

  • opencv_has_highgui_xs()

COMMAND LINE SCRIPT

image-decodeqr-wechat.pl --input in.jpg

image-decodeqr-wechat.pl --help

A CLI script is provided and will be installed by this module. Basic usage is as above.

PREREQUISITES

  • OpenCV library with contributed modules is required. The contributed modules must include the QR-code decoder library by WeChat. OpenCV must also contain the include dir (headers) - just saying.

  • A C++ compiler must be installed in your system.

  • Optionally, pkg-config or cmake must be installed in order to aid discovering the location of OpenCV's library and include dir. If you don't have these installed then you must manually set environment variables OPENCV_LDFLAGS and OPENCV_CFLAGS to point to those paths and then attempt to install this module (e.g. perl Makefile.PL; make all ; make install)

  • Optionally, OpenCV can contain the Highgui library so that output images can be displayed in their own window. But this is superfluous, because the basic operation of this module allows for saving output files to disk.

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

decode_xs(infile, modelsdir, outbase, verbosity, graphicaldisplayresult, dumpqrimagestofile)

It takes in the filename of an input image which may contain one or more QR codes and returns back an ARRAYref of strings containing all the payloads of the codes which have successfully been decoded (some QR codes may fail to be decoded because of resolution or quality etc.)

It returns undef on failure.

It returns an empty ARRAYref (i.e. a ref to an empty array) if no QR codes were found or decoded successfully.

These are the parameters it requires. They must all be present, with optional parameters allowed to be undef:

  • infile : the input image with zero or more QR codes. All the image formats of OpenCV's imread() are supported.

  • modelsdir : the location of the directory holding all model files (CNN trained models) required for QR code detection. These models are already included with this Perl module and will be installed in a shared dir during installation. Their total size is about 1MB. They have been kindly contributed by WeChat along with their library for QR Code detection. They can be found https://github.com/WeChatCV/opencv_3rdparty|here. The installed models location is returned by modelsdir(). If you do not want to experiment with your own models then just plug the output of modelsdir() to this parameter, else specify your own.

  • outbase : optionally specify output files basename which will contain detected QR-codes' payloads, bounding boxes and QR-code images extracted from the input image (one set of files for each QR-code detected). If dumpqrimagestofile is set to 1 all the aforementioned files will be created. If it is set to 0 then only the payloads will be saved in a single file (all in one file). If outbase is left undef then nothing is written to a file. As usual all detected codes' data is returned back via the returned value of decode_xs().

  • verbosity levels: 0 is mute, 1 is only for C code, 10 is for C+XS code.

  • graphicaldisplayresult : if set to 1, it will display a window with the input image and the detected QR-code(s) outlined. This is subject to whether current OpenCV installation was compiled to support imshow() (with C < highgui > enabled).

  • dumpqrimagestofile : if set to 0, and outbase is specified, then all payloads are written to a single file using the basename specified. If set to 1 a lot more information is written to separate files, one for each detected code. This is mainly for debugging purposes because the returned value contains the payloads and their corresponding QR-codes' bounding boxes. See outbase above.

decode(\%params)

This is a Perl wrapper to the decode_xs() and allows a user to specify only a minimal set of parameters with the rest to be filled in by defaults.

Like decode_xs(), it returns undef on failure. Or an arrayref of two arrays. The payloads array and the bounding-boxes array. Each has a number of items equal to the QR codes detected.

An ARRAYref of two empty arrays will be returned if no QR codes were found or decoded successfully.

The params hashref:

  • input : the name of the input image file which can contain one or more QR codes.

  • outbase : optional, if specified payloads (QR-code text) will be dumped to a text file. If further, dumpqrimagestofile is set to 1 then image files with the detected QR-codes will be dumped one for each QR-code as well as text files with payloads and bounding boxes wrt the input image.

  • modelsdir : optional, use it only if you want to use your own model files (for their format have a look at https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/d5/d04/classcv_1_1wechat__qrcode_1_1WeChatQRCode.html, they are CNN training files). This Perl module has included the model files kindly submitted by WeChat as a contribution to OpenCV and will be installed in your system with all other files. Use modelsdir() to see the location of installed model files. Their total size is about 1MB.

  • verbosity : default is 0 which is muted. 1 is for verbose C code and 10 is for verbose C and XS code.

  • dumpqrimagestofile : default is 0, set to 1 to have lots of image and text files dumped (relative to outbase) for each QR code detected.

  • graphicaldisplayresult : default is 0, set to 1 to have a window popping up with the input image and the QR-code detected highlighted, once for each code detected. This is subject to whether current OpenCV installation was compiled to support imshow() (with C < highgui > enabled).

modelsdir()

It returns the path where the models included in this Perl module have been installed. This is useful when you want to use decode_xs() and need to specify the modelsdir. Just pass the output of this to decode_xs() as its modelsdir parameter. However, you can not set the location of your own modelsdir using modelsdir() .

opencv_has_highgui_xs()

It returns 1 or 0 depending on whether current OpenCV installation has support for graphical display of images (the imshow() function). This affects the option graphicaldisplayresult to decode() and decode_xs() which will be ignored if there is no highgui support.

Caveat: checking for whether current OpenCV installation has highgui support is currently very lame, it merely tries to find the include file opencv2/highgui.hpp in the Include dirs. I have tried several methods (see ```Makefile.PL```), for example DynaLoader or FFI::CheckLib can search for symbols in any library (e.g. searching for imshow() in libopencv_highgui or libopencv_world). This would have been the most straight-forward way but alas, these are C++ libraries and function names are mangled to weird function names like:

ZN2cv3viz6imshowERKNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEEERKNS_11_InputArrayERKNS_5Size_IiEE()

There's an imshow() in there but without a regex symbol-name search the symbol can not be detected.

Another take is with Devel::CheckLib which supports compiling code snippets when searching for a particular library. This fails because they ... allow only a C compiler but we need a C++ compiler.

Finally, using Inline::CPP to compile our own snippet is totally in vain because of its useless form of running as use Inline CPP = ... >. I could not find any way of telling it to use specific CFLAGS and LDFLAGS with this useless use Inline CPP form.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

This code demonstrates how to call OpenCV (modern OpenCV v4) C++ methods using the technique suggested by Botje @ #perl in order to avoid all the function, macro, data structures name clashes between Perl and OpenCV (for example seed(), do_open(), do_close() and most notably struct cv and namespace cv in Perl and OpenCV respectively).

The trick suggested is to put all the OpenCV-calling code in a separate C++ file and provide high-level functions to be called by XS. So that the XS code does not see any OpenCV header files.

Makefile.PL will happily compile any .c and/or .cpp files found in the dir it resides by placing OBJECT => '$(O_FILES)' in %WriteMakefileArgs. And will have no problems with specifying also these:

CC      => 'g++',
LD      => 'g++',
XSOPT   => '-C++',

With one caveat, g++ compiler will mangle the names of the functions when placing them in the object files. And that will cause XSLoader to report missing and undefined symbols.

The cure to this is to wrap any function you want to remain unmangled within

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif

and

#ifdef __cplusplus
} //extern "C" {
#endif

This only need happen in the header file: wechat_qr_decode_lib.hpp and in the XS file where the Perl headers are included.

INSTALLING OpenCV

In my case downloading OpenCV using Linux's package manager was not successful.It required to add another repository which wanted to install its own versions of packages I already had. So I prefered to install OpenCV from sources. This is the procedure I followed:

  • Download OpenCV sources and also its contributed modules.

  • Extract the sources and change to the source dir.

  • From within the source dir extract the contrib archive.

  • Create a build dir and change to it.

  • There are two ways to make cmake just tolerable: cmake-gui and ccmake. The former is a full-gui interface to setting the billion cmake variables. Use it if you are on a machine which offers a GUI like this: cmake-gui .. If you are on a headless or remote host possibly over telnet or ssh then do not despair because ccmake is the CLI, curses-based equivalent to cmake-gui, use it like: ccmake .. (from within the build dir).

  • Once on either of the cmake GUIs, first do a configure, then check the list of all variables (you can search on both, for searching in the CLI, press / and then n for next hit) to suit you and then generate, quit and VERBOSE=1 make -j4 all

  • I guess, cmake variables you want to modify are OPENCV_EXTRA_MODULES_PATH and turn ON OPENCV_ENABLE_NONFREE and anything that has to do with CNN or DNN. If you have CUDA installed and a CUDA-capable GPU then enable CUDA (search for CUDA string to find the variable(s)). Also, VTK, Ceres Solver, Eigen3, Intel's TBB, CNN, DNN etc. You need to install all these additional packages first, before finally compiling OpenCV.

  • I had a problem with compiling OpenCV with a GUI (the highgui) on a headless host. So, I just disabled it. That's easy to achieve during the above.

  • I have installed this on a CUDA-capable GPU (with CUDA 10.2 installed) host and on a headless remote host with no GPU or basic. CUDA is not required for building this module.

  • It is also possible to download a binary distribution of OpenCV. Just make sure that it supports all the things I mentioned above. And that it has all the required headers (in an include dir) - just saying.

Your mileage may vary.

If you are seriously in need of installing this module then consider migrating to a serious operating system such as Linux as your first action.

INSTALLING THIS MODULE

This module depends on the existence of the OpenCV library with all the extensions and contributed modules mentioned in section PREREQUISITES.

Detecting where this library is located in your system is the weakest link in the installation process of this module. Makefile.PL contains code to do this with pkg-config or cmake. If these fail, it will look for ENVironment variables: OPENCV_LDFLAGS and OPENCV_CFLAGS, which should contain the CFLAGS (for example: <-I/usr/include/opencv4/>) and LDFLAGS (for example: <-L/usr/lib64 -lopencv_world>). Set these variables manually prior installation if the automatic methods mentioned above fail.

AUTHOR

Andreas Hadjiprocopis, <bliako at cpan.org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-image-decodeqr-wechat at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at https://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Image-DecodeQR-WeChat. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

perldoc Image::DecodeQR::WeChat

You can also look for information at:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

This software is Copyright (c) 2022 by Andreas Hadjiprocopis.

This is free software, licensed under:

The Artistic License 2.0 (GPL Compatible)

HUGS

!Almaz!