QR Code Generator

A small ColdFusion site that turns a URL or any text into a QR code image.

Live demo: https://www.trinthlo.com/sites/qrcode

What it does

• Takes a URL or any text, up to 1,000 characters, and shows it as a 600×600 PNG QR code on the page.
• Encodes text as UTF-8, so accented letters and symbols scan correctly.
• Creates the image in memory with the ZXing library, so no temporary files are written to the server.
• Puts the text in the page address (index.cfm?dest=...), so a link to a particular QR code can be shared or bookmarked.

The 1,000-character limit is lower than the most a QR code can hold. Longer text produces a code so dense that many phone cameras can't read it.

URL parameters

Parameter	Default	Description
dest	https://www.trinthlo.com	The URL or text to encode

Example: index.cfm?dest=https://github.com

ColdFusion's scriptProtect setting is on, so in text containing tags like <script> or <object>, the tag name is replaced with InvalidTag before it's encoded.

Requirements

• Adobe ColdFusion 2016 or later. It may also run on Lucee, but that hasn't been tested.
• HTTPS. The site redirects every http request to application.urls.secure.
• The ZXing jars in jar/. Application.cfc loads them with this.javaSettings, so no ColdFusion Administrator changes are needed.

Setup

1. Put the folder in your web root, for example https://localhost/qrcode.
2. In Application.cfc, inside onApplicationStart, change application.urls.normal and application.urls.secure to the address where the site will run (for example https://localhost/qrcode). If you skip this step, the https redirect and the page's CSS, JavaScript and images still point to the Trinthlo demo site.
3. Open index.cfm in a browser. If you opened the site before changing the URLs, restart ColdFusion first so the new values are loaded.

Project structure

Application.cfc   App settings, ZXing jar loading and SSL redirect
index.cfm         Input checks, QR code creation and the form
layout.cfm        Page layout and footer
jar/              ZXing 3.5.3 (core and javase) and its Apache 2.0 license
assets/           Bootstrap, jQuery, site CSS and images

License

MIT, see LICENSE. The ZXing jars in jar/ are covered by the Apache License 2.0, see jar/LICENSE-ZXING.txt.