ISO 3779 vehicle VIN decoder in PHP?

Question

Does anyone know of a ISO 3779 vehicle VIN decoder library in PHP, or Perl, or Python (or any other language, I can convert code easily) available as open source/freeware?

Even just something to decode the WMI portion (first 3 positions) would save me a lot of time. Thanks in advance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_identification_number

Answer 1

I'll let you scrape the data from Wikipedia, but below is a quick (modular) sample you can expand upon (finish off the WMI->Init() method). I would also probably make the VINLookup class a singleton or break off the WMI in to a database (normalize the data somewhere and treat it like a base-33 number like I have [possibly]).

// http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_identification_number#World_Manufacturer_Identifier

define('VIN_CHARACTERS', 'ABCDEFGHJKLMNPRSTUVWXYZ1234567890'); // no I, O or Q & 0 is last.

class WMI
{
  public $country;
  public $region;
  public $low;
  public $high;

  public function __construct($country,$region,$low,$high)
  {
    $this->country = $country;
    $this->region = $region;
    $this->low = $low;
    $this->high = $high;
  }

  private static function CodeToDec($code)
  {
    if (strlen($code) != 2)
      return false;

    return (strpos(VIN_CHARACTERS, $code{0}) * strlen(VIN_CHARACTERS)) + strpos(VIN_CHARACTERS, $code{1});
  }

  public function IsMatch($vin)
  {
    // first, grab the first 2 characters
    $code = substr($vin,0,2);

    // next, see if it's in range
    // we do this by converting it to a numeric
    $_low = WMI::CodeToDec($this->low);
    $_high = WMI::CodeToDec($this->high);
    $_code = WMI::CodeToDec($code);

    return (($_code >= $_low) && ($_code <= $_high));
  }

  public function __toString()
  {
    return sprintf("%s, %s (%s, %s)", $this->country, $this->region, $this->low, $this->high);
  }
}

class VINLookup
{
  private $vin;
  private $wmis = array();

  public function __construct($vin)
  {
    if (!VINLookup::IsValid($vin))
      throw new Exception('Invalid VIN specified');

    $this->vin = $vin;

    $this->Init();
  }

  private function Init()
  {
    $this->wmis = array(
      new WMI('South Africa',     'Africa',         'AA', 'AH'),
      new WMI('Ivory Coast',      'Africa',         'AJ', 'AN'),
      new WMI('(not assigned)',   'Africa',         'AP', 'A0'),
      new WMI('Angola',           'Africa',         'BA', 'BE'),
      new WMI('Kenya',            'Africa',         'BF', 'BK'),

      new WMI('United States',    'North America',  '1A', '10'),
      new WMI('Canada',           'North America',  '2A', '20'),
      new WMI('Mexico',           'North America',  '3A', '3W'),
      new WMI('Costa Rica',       'North America',  '3X', '37'),
    );
  }

  public function GetCountry()
  {
    foreach ($this->wmis as $wmi)
    {
      if ($wmi->IsMatch($this->vin))
        return $wmi;
    }
    return false;
  }

  public static function IsValid($vin)
  {
    return preg_match('/^[A-HJ-NPR-Z0-9]{17}$/',$vin);
  }
}

Usage:

// check for a valid VIN number supplied
VINLookup::IsValid(<vin>);


// create a new VINLookup with the specified VIN
$lookup = new VINLookup(<vin>);

// retrieve the _Country_ object (above), or FALSE if no country match was found.
$lookup->GetCountry();