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Driver’s licenses with a working magnetic stripe can be swiped through the magnetic stripe reader and the encoded information will pre-fill into the Check-Inn property management system. If you are in a state that does not have a magnetic stripe, or a good portion of your guests are from out of state, the Advanced ID Scanner is the best option for your property. (4) A private entity that swipes an individual’s driver license or identification card under paragraph (2)(c) or paragraph (2)(d) may store or share personal information collected from swiping an individual’s driver license or identification card for the purpose of preventing fraud or other criminal activity against the private entity.
Active4 months ago
Is there an existing C# library that can be used to parse the information from a driver's license? I'm looking to parse the data directly from a swipe reader, so its a long string that needs to be broken down into it's components. I know that this is a big request, so I'm not interested in the validation of the numbers or even the license ID itself, I really just want to parse out the first and last name. I'm eventually interested in all 50 states but would like to see AZ and CA first.
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Unknown CoderUnknown Coder2,3511616 gold badges6565 silver badges116116 bronze badges
3 Answers
I haven't done an exhaustive search, but I have a little experience with this and I believe the answer is 'No'. Driver's licence formats vary by state and could potentially change often. However, if you're looking for just the first and last name, that should be fairly easy to figure out by trial and error. Most DL's aren't encrypted from what I've seen. Just setup your card reader through Hyperterminal or something similar and look at the output from you card swipes.
Edit: Please see @Dan Tao's answer as well as the comments for information on driver's license formats. There might even be a C# library for parsing AAMVA compliant license data now (there wasn't in 2011 to my knowledge), which was the original question, which is why I replied 'No'.
FishBasketGordoFishBasketGordo20.4k44 gold badges4646 silver badges8282 bronze badges
I realize this question was asked quite a while ago; but I actually don't agree with @FishBasketGordo that the answer is no; if you read this Wikipedia article you'll see a very clearly specified format that all U.S. driver's licenses (with magnetic stripes) supposedly adhere to, as specified in a standard by the AAMVA.
I personally have done some work on a JavaScript library to do exactly what you're asking (extract name, number, and in my case a few other bits of info) and have had success with the states I've been able to test. Obviously I haven't gotten my hands on licenses from all 50 states, though.
In any case, though I don't know of a library that you can leverage, I still wanted to weigh in on this question and suggest that this should be possible.
Driver License Card Reader
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Dan TaoDan Tao98.3k4747 gold badges263263 silver badges415415 bronze badges
I am not familiar with the driver's license strings which according to https://stackoverflow.com/users/783175/fishbasketgordo changes in various states, but it occurs to be that you have several choices.
- use regular expressions.
- use javascript (yes at the server) like suggested by the JInt package: http://jint.codeplex.com/discussions/240715 and then look for jQuery or node.js plugins
- use
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mozillanerdmozillanerd
protected by Community♦Jan 30 '14 at 18:59
Driver License Swipe Reader For Windows 10
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