District of Columbia Driver License & ID Card PDF417 API

Reading District of Columbia Card Barcodes in Real Workflows

Washington, DC has many residents who do not own a car, so non-driver ID cards are common at venues and building security desks. Lobby kiosks with fixed cameras struggle when a card is held at an angle. PDF417 error correction recovers some damage, but an application should never invent identity values when the barcode cannot be decoded.

One API for District of Columbia Licenses and ID Cards

District of Columbia cards are issued by the District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles. Licenses and identification cards carry the same AAMVA DL/ID PDF417 barcode on the back. Send the back image to the StructOCR PDF417 API: it decodes the barcode deterministically, normalizes the jurisdiction to DC, and returns document_kind as driver_license or id_card. Test a non-sensitive sample in the free PDF417 scanner. For the printed front of the card, use the Driver License OCR API.

Where This Workflow Fits

• Office building visitor desks: Pre-fill names, dates, and address for office building visitor desks and keep final confirmation in your application.
• Bar and venue entry: Accept both District of Columbia licenses and state ID cards, and use document_kind where only a license is acceptable.
• Non-driver ID account setup: Send unreadable District of Columbia barcodes to a retake or manual review step instead of saving partial identity data.

Decode a District of Columbia Card Back

Upload a JPG, PNG, or WebP image of the full card back. Move out of direct light or tilt the card slightly to remove glare, then upload the original camera photo.

Prerequisite: A server-side StructOCR API key and a clear image of the complete card back

curl -X POST https://api.structocr.com/v1/driver-license-pdf417 \
  -H "x-api-key: $STRUCTOCR_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@district-of-columbia-card-back.jpg"

Illustrative District of Columbia ID Card Response

This response uses wholly fictional data to show a DC identification card. A license returns document_kind driver_license and its class fields.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "type": "drivers_license",
    "document_kind": "id_card",
    "source": "pdf417",
    "country_code": "USA",
    "region": "DC",
    "document_number": "SAMPLE1234",
    "surname": "SAMPLE",
    "given_names": "ALEX MORGAN",
    "first_name": "ALEX",
    "middle_name": "MORGAN",
    "sex": "X",
    "date_of_birth": "1990-01-15",
    "date_of_issue": "2025-01-15",
    "date_of_expiry": "2030-01-15",
    "address": "100 EXAMPLE AVE",
    "city": "SAMPLE CITY",
    "postal_code": "00000",
    "vehicle_class": null,
    "restrictions": null,
    "endorsements": null,
    "document_discriminator": "SAMPLE-DISCRIMINATOR",
    "issuer_identification_number": null,
    "aamva_version": 10,
    "jurisdiction_version": 0
  }
}