CA DMV Plate Finder

A script that finds available custom license plates through the California DMV's online system. This is the codebase corrsponding to this blog post on finding available California license plates.

Prerequisites

• Bun

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/CA-DMV-Plate-Finder.git
cd CA-DMV-Plate-Finder

2. Install dependencies:

bun install

Usage

Running the Application

bun run find-plates

Or directly:

bun src/index.ts

Customizing Plate Input

The application supports two methods for providing plates to check:

Method 1: Using a plates.txt File (Recommended)

Create a plates.txt file in the project root with one plate per line:

ABC123
TESLA1
GITHUB
CODING

The application will automatically detect and stream plates from this file.

Method 2: Generating Combinations

If no plates.txt file exists, the application will generate 3-character combinations. You can modify the getNextPlate() generator in src/index.ts to customize the generation pattern:

import { combinationsWithReplacement } from "combinatorial-generators";

async function* getNextPlate(): AsyncGenerator<string> {
  const chars = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789";

  for (const combo of combinationsWithReplacement(chars, 3)) {
    yield combo.join("");
  }
}