The mDL profile of ISO/IEC 18013-5:2021: what its element identifiers are, how each one is encoded, and the handful of rules that are easy to get wrong when issuing or verifying one.

@m-doc/core reads and writes the document; this package says what belongs in it. It defines no value models of its own — everything here is constants, types and functions over the claims you already have.

Part of m-doc. Used throughout the runnable examples.

Installation

npm i @m-doc/mdl

Age attestations

An mDL conveys age without revealing a date of birth, through age_over_NN elements. §7.2.5 defines what a request for one means, and it is not "return the element with that name":

provide the nearest age attestation equal to or larger than NN with value TRUE, or smaller than NN with value FALSE

import { resolveAgeAttestation } from '@m-doc/mdl'

// The document holds only age_over_21, and that answers a request for 18
resolveAgeAttestation({ age_over_21: true }, 18)
// → { identifier: 'age_over_21', age: 21, value: true }

// Not being over 65 says nothing about being over 18
resolveAgeAttestation({ age_over_65: false }, 18)
// → undefined

Issuing works from the other side. §7.2.5 requires the values to hold at the MSO's validFrom, not at the moment of issuance, so that is what you pass:

import { ageAt, buildAgeAttestations, readAgeAttestations } from '@m-doc/mdl'

buildAgeAttestations(birthDate, validFrom, [16, 18, 21, 65])
// → { age_over_16: true, age_over_18: true, age_over_21: false, age_over_65: false }

readAgeAttestations(claims)     // every age_over_NN present, ascending
// → [{ identifier: 'age_over_18', age: 18, value: true }, …]

ageAt(birthDate, someDate)      // whole years

Driving privileges

The claim arrives as decoded CBOR — an array of Maps. Read it into something typed:

import { privilegesFor, readDrivingPrivileges } from '@m-doc/mdl'

readDrivingPrivileges(claims.driving_privileges)
// → [{ vehicleCategoryCode: 'B', issueDate: DateOnly, codes: [{ code: '01', sign: '=', value: '1' }] }]

privilegesFor(claims.driving_privileges, 'B')

Element identifiers and encodings

Every element Table 5 names has one fixed encoding — there is no choosing.

import { encodingFor, MDL_ELEMENT_ENCODING } from '@m-doc/mdl'

encodingFor('family_name')          // 'tstr'
encodingFor('birth_date')           // 'full-date'
encodingFor('portrait')             // 'bstr'
encodingFor('height')               // 'uint'
encodingFor('driving_privileges')   // 'structure'
encodingFor('issue_date')           // 'tdate-or-full-date' — Table 5 allows either
encodingFor('age_over_65')          // 'bool' — any NN, not only the listed ones
encodingFor('org.example.custom')   // undefined

MDL_ELEMENT_ENCODING is the map itself, if you would rather iterate it. encodingFor is the one to call, because it also answers for age_over_NN, where NN is open-ended.

import {
  MDL_DOC_TYPE,               // 'org.iso.18013.5.1.mDL'
  MDL_NAMESPACE,              // 'org.iso.18013.5.1'
  jurisdictionNamespace,      // jurisdictionNamespace('DE') → 'org.iso.18013.5.1.DE'
  MDL_MANDATORY_ELEMENTS,     // Table 5, presence M
  MDL_OPTIONAL_ELEMENTS,      // Table 5, presence O
  parseAgeOverIdentifier,     // 'age_over_18' → 18
  Sex,                        // ISO/IEC 5218
  EYE_COLOURS,
  HAIR_COLOURS,
} from '@m-doc/mdl'

The identifier types are exported too — MdlElementIdentifier, MdlMandatoryElementIdentifier, MdlOptionalElementIdentifier, AgeOverIdentifier, MdlEncoding, EyeColour, HairColour, SexValue — so a typo in an element name is a compile error rather than a claim nobody reads.

Profile checks

import { findMissingMandatoryElements, isExpired, isNotYetValid } from '@m-doc/mdl'

findMissingMandatoryElements(claims)   // Table 5 elements the document lacks
isExpired(claims)                      // undefined where expiry_date was not disclosed
isNotYetValid(claims, someDate)

findMissingMandatoryElements is a finding on a document that was meant to be complete — one straight from an issuer. A presented mDL is allowed to disclose a subset; that is the point of selective disclosure.

isExpired and isNotYetValid return undefined rather than false when the date they need was not disclosed, so "we do not know" never reads as "it is fine".

Requirements

Node 20.19 or newer. Ships ESM and CJS, with type declarations for both. Depends only on @m-doc/core, and only for its DateOnly type.

License

Apache-2.0.