import pyzbar.pyzbar - Unable to find zbar shared library

Question

I want to make a script for detecting and reading QR codes from photos. I would like to use PyZbar for that, but I have a problem with some errors.

I'm working in google colaboratory

!sudo apt install tesseract-ocr
!pip install pytesseract
!pip install pyzbar[scripts]

import shutil
import os
import random
import re
import cv2 
import numpy as np
import pytesseract
from pytesseract import Output
%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib as mpl
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.pylab as pylab
import glob
import pyzbar.pyzbar
from PIL import Image

this is an error I'm struggling with:

ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-25-d8758fa4db37> in <module>()
     24 import glob
     25 # ZBAR - Bar Code Reader is an open source software suite for reading bar codes from various sources, such as video streams, image files and raw intensity sensors
---> 26 import pyzbar.pyzbar
     27 # PIL - Python Imaging Library
     28 from PIL import Image

4 frames
/usr/local/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/pyzbar/zbar_library.py in load()
     63         path = find_library('zbar')
     64         if not path:
---> 65             raise ImportError('Unable to find zbar shared library')
     66         libzbar = cdll.LoadLibrary(path)
     67         dependencies = []

ImportError: Unable to find zbar shared library

Thank You ind advance for your answers

Answer 1

Before you can !pip install pyzbar, you need to install libzbar with this command.

!apt install libzbar0

Then, pyzbar should work.

Answer 2

I had the same issue working on Amazon SageMaker, these commands worked for me

# First install zbar
!sudo apt-get install libzbar-dev -y
!sudo yum install zbar-devel -y

# Then install pyzbar
!pip install pyzbar

Answer 3

This solved it for me on Mac:

mkdir ~/lib
ln -s $(brew --prefix zbar)/lib/libzbar.dylib ~/lib/libzbar.dylib

From https://github.com/npinchot/zbar/issues/3#issuecomment-1038005495