User Guide

Section 3. Commands
113
write
Function
Data encode command.
Syntax
/write data
Errors
/write 94<LF>
Encode is not supported on this device.
/write 34<LF>
The data field was in the incorrect format.
/write 82<LF>
The write command was canceled.
/write 45<LF>
Device in wrong mode (e.g., if /read already issued)
/write 60<LF>
Error during write operation (e.g., on MT-95)
Remarks
The data field is in the following format:
[
%an-data?][;n-data?|@a-data?][(+n-data?|#an-data?|!an-data?|&an-data)]
an-data is alphanumeric data (ASCII characters ‘ ‘ to ‘_’ (0x20 to 0x7f))
n-data is numeric data (ASCII characters ‘0’ to ‘?’ (0x30 to 0x3f))
The data should not contain the end sentinel character (?).
If the application sends data for an alphanumeric track that contains lowercase
characters (ASCII values beyond 0x60), they will be capitalized if
capitalize =
1. To disable this and send the data as-is to the device, set the capitalize property
to 0. The three sub-sections of the data string represent the three tracks on the
magnetic card. The data for each track begins with a start sentinel character, which
defines both the track number and the data format for the track:
% identifies track 1 (7-bit alphanumeric)
; identifies track 2 (5-bit numeric)
@ identifies track 2 (7-bit alphanumeric)
+ identifies track 3 (5-bit numeric)
! identifies track 3 (CA Driver License)
# identifies track 3 (alphanumeric, AAMVA)
& identifies track 3 (7-bit alphanumeric)
Note that any or all of the data may be missing, but the order of the data for the
tracks must always be in order (1, 2, 3). A missing track is interpreted as “don’t
write” for the data encode command – that track will not be overwritten by the
encode operation.
The response sent for this command is: /write status.
status is 00 if the encode succeeded and non-zero if it failed.
See the definitions of the status values in Appendix C. Status Codes.
Example
Encode tracks 1 and 2:
Command
/write %B12345^TEST^0000?;12345?<LF>
Response
/write 00<LF>