Scanning and parsing a Driver's license barcode

AppSheet AppSheet Q&A
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Hello everyone,

I have two questions:

I would like to build an app that scans and parses a driver’s license barcode to record attendance for events. I was able to scan the barcode of a driver’s license with AppSheet, but how do I extract the information from that string of text that is returned into different virtual columns? It looks like the string is in a PDF417 format.

It looks like someone achieved something similar with Microsoft Power Apps here https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Community-App-Samples/Drivers-License-PDF417-Barcode-Data-Extraction/td-p/463649

I also don’t want to store the driver’s license. All I really need is the city and address from the scanned driver’s license. How would I make sure the scanned driver’s license barcode’s string isn’t stored, synced, or transmitted in any way? Meaning after the barcode is scanned and split into the various fields, I would like to clear/delete the original barcode string that contains all person’s private information.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

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>>" how do I extract the information from that string of text that is returned into different virtual columns? "

https://help.appsheet.com/en/articles/2357340-split

https://help.appsheet.com/en/articles/2357278-index

>>" How would I make sure the scanned driver’s license barcode’s string isn’t stored, synced, or transmitted in any way?"

If you scan it into the app as a data change, which you would have to do to pull any of the info within it, then you can’t stop it from being synced, transmitted, or stored (at least temporarily), but you can set up an Action or a Bot to automatically delete it immediately afterwards.

https://help.appsheet.com/en/articles/4865307-appsheet-automation-the-essentials

2 Likes
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Sorry, I just saw this response in my Spam folder.

I was able to parse the needed driver’s license information into another “Street” field with this:

INDEX(SPLIT(
INDEX(SPLIT([Drivers License],"
DAG"),2)
,"
"),1)

I’m still working on trying to figure out how to clear/discard the original scanned license.

Maybe, I can somehow scan the drivers license and then do a redirect to a different edit form and pass only the parsed info that I need to the new edit form and then clear the original form with the scanned license? I really wish you could scan a barcode to a virtual column.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!