The magnetic reader module of idScan reads magnetic stripes of driver licenses and extracts the textual information stored on it, into a text file or the clipboard. With a reading and processing speed of 1-2 seconds per ID card, idScan- Magnetic Reader is the ideal.

• A limited number of states have a magnetic stripe printed on the back of the driver’s license. 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.
• Driver's Licenses can be quickly read into Merchant Magic™ using either the Magtek credit card swiper or the Xenon 1900 barcode scanner. The Magtek reads the magnetic stripe on a driver's license and the Xenon scanner reads the two-dimensional barcode.

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.

YahiaUnknown CoderUnknown Coder

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'.

FishBasketGordoFishBasketGordo

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.

Dan TaoDan Tao

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.

1. use regular expressions.
2. 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
3. use

protected by Community♦Jan 30 '14 at 18:59

Driver S License Swipe Reader

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