Drivers License Barcode Generator
This Barcode Creator uses the free version of the Dynamic Barcode Generator Subscription to easily produce downloadable barcode images. The free version.
All of this is fairly straight forward.
1. Scan the back of your license / permit using a medium - high resolution. The resolution should be set so that the 2d barcode is about 2000 pixels long.
2. Open up the image in Photoshop and cut out the 2d barcode. The 2d barcode is the one on the bottom in the picture. Most states use the PDF-417 (Portable Data File, with 17 modules each containing 4 bars and spaces, thus 417). Edit the barcode so that it is exactly 2000 or less pixels long because that is the maximum the program will allow, and save it.
3. Open swipe toolkit pdf417 barcode reader, available to download in the last step, and load your barcode into it. Click decode image, and a window with all your information should pop up. The picture shows the window that I got ( I removed thinks I should probably care about). As you can see, you can view the information processed, in raw bytes, or in hex. An interesting thing to note is if your card contains your social security number, some states put it on and some states don't.
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Comments
commented Mar 14, 2016
I used Mobile Vision API to detect US Driver Licenses. I am able to scan the DL PDF417 barcodes and I see that driverLicense object is set within Barcode object. However for some states (Eg. FL, NC) the driverLicense object is NULL. When I checked the valueFormat in Barcode object it is set to 12 (Barcode.DRIVER_LICENSE) for working scenario and set to 7 (Barcode.TEXT) for non-working scenario. Could you confirm whether this is an issue with BarcodeScanner APIs? Sample code is as follows. |
commented Mar 15, 2016
The DL/ID parser is fairly simple and doesn't work perfectly on IDs from all states, unfortunately. There might be some jurisdiction-specific fields that are tripping it up, or they might not be using a fully spec-compliant encoding. We'd like to improve it -- if you'd like to help, the anonymized raw text of the non-working cards would be helpful in diagnosing the problem. However, if you aren't comfortable sharing it (or just aren't sure how to completely remove all identifying information) that's okay too! |
commented Mar 15, 2016
If you can't share the raw values, it would be helpful to know where the first occurrence of 'DL' appears in the values that won't parse. Normally, it would be at index 21 (e.g. '@n rANSI 636045030002DL'). |
commented Mar 15, 2016
Sure, here is the raw data from the scanner. I used the sample license from internet for FL state. |
commented Mar 15, 2016
Sample FL DL.PDF |
commented Mar 15, 2016
I got the NC state info and removed the personal info. Let me know whether this helps. This is from a valid NC state DL. @ |
commented Mar 15, 2016
Here is the NJ state DL which is working fine, 03-21 17:53:57.419 28002 28431 D BarcodeScannerActivity: Barcode Format: 2048 |
commented Mar 17, 2016
Thanks, this is very helpful (though in the future, it would be great to get an escaped literal string that preserves special characters, e.g. '@n rANSI [...]r'). The FL and NC licenses both violate the AAMVA spec in a couple ways, so we're going to make our parser more lenient for future releases. |
commented Mar 17, 2016
Thanks for the update. Could you confirm the timeline for the release with improved parser? |
commented Mar 17, 2016
We don't have a timeline to announce, but I expect a new release within a couple of months. |
referenced this issue Mar 17, 2016
ClosedPDF417 and Driver License Scan not detected #11
Free Online Barcode Generator
commented May 11, 2016 • edited
edited
Oregon license sticker (the owner moved and received a sticker from the DMV to replace the barcode with new street address information). |
commented May 11, 2016
Wow. That doesn't even attempt to follow the specs -- unfortunately, our parser won't recognize that text as DL/ID data without the leading '@n r(ANSI AAMVA)'. It also doesn't contain the required directory information. |
commented May 11, 2016
It's pretty bad. I'm just going to write a super lenient fallback for the case where despite best efforts the |
commented May 11, 2016
Actually, please disregard the earlier sample I posted; I'm not sure why, but escaping the string correctly and dumping it on a single line made the prefices and suffices I was expecting show up. These samples are also from Oregon and don't register as driver's licenses, even though they do have the
(Yes, the format of the date |
commented May 12, 2016
Thanks for the examples! However, it appears that the process of redacting personal information may have changed the length of some fields (our updated parser fails on the snippets you provided). The large block of numbers in DL/ID data is a bunch of offsets, which means you must take care not to add/remove any characters when sanitizing it. |
commented May 12, 2016 • edited
edited
Ah, my mistake. These should match the original byte positions:
|
commented May 12, 2016
Unfortunately, both of those examples are badly broken. The first claims to contain a DL block starting at offset 39 with length 285 ('DL00390285') that overruns the entire string. The second declares a block ('DL00390192') that extends partway into the next ZO block. |
commented Sep 9, 2016
Doesn't detect barcode in this sample image which contains data for a NY passport. Tried the barcode reader sample on a Nexus 5. |
commented Sep 9, 2016
Thanks for the sample. The raw contents ('@ nnnANSI') are unfortunately wildly incompatible with the specification, which says entries begin with '@n rANSI'. However, I suspect that many sample drivers licenses are produced manually and are full of errors that don't occur 'in the wild'. Real New York licenses decode fine with our parser. |
commented Sep 10, 2016
Thanks for the explanation @pchx |
commented Nov 21, 2016
The latest version of our Barcode API (part of Google Play Services 10.0) makes the DL/ID parser more lenient; it should handle a wider range of licenses now (there may still be some remaining edge cases, however). |
commented Nov 22, 2016
Cool @pchx. Let me test it out this week. Thanks for the heads up. |
commented Feb 4, 2017 • edited
edited
Hello @pchx. I was wondering when does length start, i understand that it starts before 0180 and ends at the bottom? |
commented Jan 15, 2018
Not sure if this thread is still alive but Im trying to parse some drivers license at work. The issue Im running into is that the data from the scanner is coming back as one line with no return characters to separate the data fields. Anyone else run into this issue? |
commented Sep 19, 2018
Can someone fill me in on the exact format including the /n and /r? Also, what is the diamond character with the questionmark in it? Anyone know? |
commented Sep 20, 2018
@emottau I would suggest to refer to AAMVA DL spec (Table D.1 — 2D symbols header format). Also, if you see any issue in parsing please open new issue as this is closed. |