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+---- Thread: Finding a VIN from VRM (UK) (/showthread.php?tid=80145)
Finding a VIN from VRM (UK) - JPToadstool - 16-06-2023
Hey all,
Regularly get so much from this forum, so wanted to give back a bit. When I'm searching for potential car purchases, I often want the VIN to check options and find the history. Decided to go searching for open APIs on websites to find the info I need.
This is a guide on how to get the commands needed and a couple of ones I've found listed below. I found in general, government websites don't give you much, neither do parts websites. However, car selling websites seem a more successful option.
Found these by enabling the Chrome Developer Tools and observing the network data in the Network tab. Ensuring network log is being recorded (record button in upper right of the window), find a website that has a car reg lookup, such and motorway.com, and add your reg, then look through the network requests to see if any might contain some decent data.
In the screenshot attached, I used the Aston Martin press plate "AML 1", to find the VIN of the car it is currently registered to.
If you want, you can then export the command as cURL, which can be pasted into a Terminal window to get you the same result:
You can then import this into Postman as raw text so that you can more easily play with it, find out which parts of the request are not needed and translate into Python for example.
As a result of this, I have found these two end-points which you can use to lookup the VIN given a reg, just replace {VRM} with the vehicle registration you're looking for.
Using Motorway.com:
Code:
curl --location 'https://api.motorway.co.uk/platform/vrm-check' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{"user":{},"vrm":"{VRM}"}'Using SellYourCarToJack.com:
Code:
curl --location 'https://crm.syc2j.com/api/vehicle-details' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{"VRM":"{VRM}"}'