taiwan-id

This package provides both a Haskell library and a command-line tool (CLI) for working with identification numbers issued to residents of Taiwan, as well as the other territories of the Republic of China (ROC), including Kinmen, Matsu, and Penghu.

Contents

1. Background
2. Library
   1. Usage
      1. Parsing
         1. Run-time parsing
         2. Compile-time parsing
      2. Inspecting attributes
   2. Design philosophy
      1. Correctness by construction
      2. Lawful class instances
3. Command-line tool
   1. Installation
   2. Usage
      1. Validation
      2. Decoding
      3. Generation
4. References

Background

The ROC government issues identification numbers to individuals on two types of identification card:

1. National Identification Cards (國民身分證), issued by the Household Registration Office (戶政事務所);
2. Resident Certificates (居留證), issued by the National Immigration Agency (移民署).

Although these two card types are distinct, both share a common identification number format, with numbers assigned under each system occupying disjoint parts of the same number space.

Each identification number consists of a single uppercase letter followed by nine decimal digits:

A 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
│ │ └───────────┘ │
│ │ serial number └── checksum
│ └── gender and issuer
└──── region

The leading letter encodes the region in which the number was issued. The second digit jointly encodes the holder’s gender and the issuing authority (either the Household Registration Office or the National Immigration Agency). The final digit serves as a checksum.

Library

Usage

Usage examples assume the following extensions and imports:

>>> :set -XDataKinds
>>> :set -XOverloadedStrings
>>> :set -XTypeApplications
>>> import Taiwan.ID qualified as ID
>>> import Taiwan.ID.Region qualified as ID.Region
>>> import Taiwan.ID.Language (Language (..))

Parsing

At the heart of the library is the ability to parse and validate identification numbers from textual input, accepting only those that are well-formed according to the standard.

The library provides two functions for this purpose: fromText, which parses a Text value at run time, and fromSymbol, which parses a type-level Symbol at compile time.

Run-time parsing

To parse an ID from Text, use the fromText function:

>>> ID.fromText "A123456789"
Right (ID.fromSymbol @"A123456789")

If the supplied Text is not a valid identification number, fromText returns a structured error describing why the number is invalid:

>>> ID.fromText "A1234"
Left InvalidLength

>>> ID.fromText "A123456780"
Left InvalidChecksum

>>> ID.fromText "A1_3456789"
Left (InvalidChar (CharIndex 2) (CharRange '0' '9'))

Compile-time parsing

The fromSymbol function constructs an ID from a type-level Symbol, validated entirely at compile time:

>>> ID.fromSymbol @"A123456789"
ID.fromSymbol @"A123456789"

Instead of run-time errors, invalid symbols are reported as type errors:

>>> ID.fromSymbol @"A1234"
error:
    An ID must have exactly 10 characters.

>>> ID.fromSymbol @"A123456780"
error:
    ID has invalid checksum.

>>> ID.fromSymbol @"A_23456789"
error:
    "A_23456789"
      ^
    Character at this position must be a digit from the set {1, 2, 8, 9}.

Inspecting attributes

Once you have a valid ID, you can inspect its attributes:

>>> let i = ID.fromSymbol @"A123456789"

>>> ID.getIssuer i
HouseholdRegistrationOffice

>>> ID.getGender i
Male

>>> ID.Region.toText English (ID.getRegion i)
"Taipei City"

Design philosophy

Correctness by construction

The library is built around the principle that invalid states should be unrepresentable. This applies not just to the top-level ID type, but to every component type used to construct it.

An ID value is stored as a record of smaller types, each of which admits only the values that are structurally valid at its position:

• c0 :: Letter — one of the 26 uppercase letters
• c1 :: Digit1289 — one of the digits {1, 2, 8, 9}
• c2 .. c8 :: Digit — digits in the range [0 .. 9]

The checksum digit is not stored in an ID value at all. Instead, it is computed on demand from the other fields, which means a stored ID value is always internally consistent — there is no way to construct one with a mismatched checksum.

This means that the type of ID itself acts as a proof of validity. If you hold a value of type ID, you know — without any further checking — that it represents a well-formed identification number.

Lawful class instances

The existence of fromSymbol makes it possible to offer Show and Read instances that are genuinely lawful in a way that naive implementations often are not.

The Show instance produces a valid Haskell expression:

>>> show (ID.fromSymbol @"A123456789")
"ID.fromSymbol @\"A123456789\""

This output is not merely human-readable — it is a well-typed Haskell expression that, when evaluated, produces the original value. As a result, read . show roundtrips faithfully:

>>> let i = ID.fromSymbol @"A123456789"
>>> read (show i) == i
True

Command-line tool

Installation

First, install the Haskell toolchain. One popular way to do this is via ghcup.

Then run:

cabal install taiwan-id

Usage

The taiwan-id command-line tool provides three commands.

Validation

The validate command checks whether an identification number is valid.

If an identification number is valid, it exits with code 0 and no further output:

$ taiwan-id validate P833485645

If an identification number is not valid, it exits with code 1 and emits an error message to stderr:

$ taiwan-id validate N140792413
Invalid checksum.

$ taiwan-id validate I96342
Invalid length.
An identification number must be exactly 10 characters in length.

$ taiwan-id validate C25171445&
Invalid character:
C25171445&
         ^
Character at this position must be a character in the range [0 .. 9].

Decoding

The decode command decodes the attributes of an identification number. Output is available in English (the default) or Chinese:

$ taiwan-id decode H271789449
Issuer: Household Registration Office
Gender: Female
Region: Taoyuan City

$ taiwan-id decode Y175974499 --language=Chinese
核發機關：戶政事務所
性別　　：男性
地區　　：陽明山

Generation

The generate command generates one or more random identification numbers:

$ taiwan-id generate
E218711091

$ taiwan-id generate --count 4
R886773836
C129535585
E892135379
K207816302

For deterministic output, you can specify a seed:

$ taiwan-id generate --count 4 --seed 888
X207421526
H891911565
K935490929
O198217491

References

• National identification card (Taiwan) — Wikipedia
• Resident certificate — Wikipedia
• 中華民國國民身分證 — 維基百科
• 中華民國居留證 — 維基百科