daspecster / ziptastic

This is a Python API for getting zipcodes

Ziptastic

We have moved to GetZiptastic.com!

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Important

We recommend using GeoIP to determine the country code of your visitor as a suggestion when they are filling out your form. (http://pointlessrants.com/posts/python-geoip-python-geoip-cities-tutorial/)

Notes

We are now using the geonames.org database for postal codes. There are many more countries we support.

Available country codes: AD, AR, AS, AT, AU, BD, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CZ, DE, DK, DO, ES, FI, FO, FR, GB, GF, GG, GL, GP, GT, GU, GY, HR, HU, IM, IN, IS, IT, JE, JP, LI, LK, LT, LU, MC, MD, MH, MK, MP, MQ, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PH, PK, PL, PM, PR, PT, RE, RU, SE, SI, SJ, SK, SM, TH, TR, US, VA, VI, YT, ZA

Usage

v2

This is the new updated version and requires that you pass in the country code as well.

Example: http://zip.getziptastic.com/v2/US/48867

v1

This version only supports US postal codes and can be accessed like this...

Example: http://zip.getziptastic.com/48867 and http://zip.getziptastic.com/?zip=48867

ziptastic's Issues

No Danish postal codes

Sadly, the database does not seem to contain all, if any, Danish postal codes. Here is a list of resources to use:

• Wikipedia
• Another site that seems easier to scrape but may or may not be up to date
• A site contains some additional details for various postal codes such as associated street name (Gade) and company (Firma)

Add International Zipcodes

Actually, closing it out as I see some.

Multiple cities resolution of zip codes

Multiple cities can map to a single zip code, but the API only returns one city per zip code.

For example, for zip code 21774, USPS.com returns "FREDERICK MD" and "FORT DETRICK MD" as valid cities, and "COLLEGE ESTATES MD" as a frequently-used erroneous city: https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupResultsAction!input.action?resultMode=2&companyName=&address1=&address2=&city=&state=Select&urbanCode=&postalCode=21702&zip=

The Ziptastic API only returns Frederick.

Is the plan to recommend using Ziptastic only to fill in unpopulated fields, and discourage its use as a validator?

Project website URL is wrong

"elevenbasedtwo.com" is not to be found. Do you mean "elevenbasetwo.com"?

Also, I would think your project website would go to your GitHub pages site and not the actual API, which is difficult to visit in a browser.

Reverse Lookup Zip -> Country

In theory, we could return a list of values based on a postal code that's entered.

v2 API returns wrong information for zipcode

I called http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/v2/US/55404, which should return information about Minneapolis, Minnesota, but instead I got back information about El Charco II, Mexico. When I call http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/55404 (the v1 API), it returned the correct info.

See the following screenshot for more information about the results of the API call:
https://skitch.com/theunraveler/82hnh/ziptastic-drupal.dev

Missing ZIP Code 84129

According to USPS.com, 84129 is valid ZIP code for SALT LAKE CTY UT and TAYLORSVILLE UT.

Add ISO 3166-2 compliance

"Smart Tool! It would be nice, if the returned state is ISO 3166-2 instead of or additionally to the name."

Redis

Wouldn't this be the perfect candidate for using Redis as the datastore?

(Note: My opinion. Certainly open to debate.)

Getting different cities for the same zip

When I enter 60654 on the demo page (http://daspecster.github.io/ziptastic/demo.html), I get Chicago, which is correct. However, when I enter 60654 on the demo at css-tricks, I get 'Merchandise Mart', which is incorrect. Any idea why this is?

http://css-tricks.com/examples/Zip/

Australia country code given away

AU is the Australian country code - however it appears to be given to another country (unknown). Australian postcodes are four digits.

select * from zipcodes where Country = 'AU';

80593|96548|APO|AP|AU
80595|96550|APO|AP|AU
80598|96553|APO|AP|AU
80599|96554|DPO|AP|AU
80603|96577|APO|AP|AU

Server seems to hate any setRequestHeader content in the XHR request

I was re-writing the example using Prototype's Ajax.Request method (for clearer and potentially more cross-platform code) and discovered that the request would always fail. After some debugging with another member of the Prototype/Scriptaculous list, we came down to the realization that Prototype was adding the following headers to the request:

client.setRequestHeader('X-Requested-With', 'XMLHttpRequest');
client.setRequestHeader('X-Prototype-Version', '1.7');
client.setRequestHeader('Accept', 'text/javascript, text/html, application/xml, text/xml, */*');

When any of those are present, your server returns an error: 501 Unsupported method ('OPTIONS').

If I comment them out, I get the correct response.

Can this be relaxed on the server, please?

Thanks,

Walter

Not Working in IE9

I've been sending requests to your example url (zip.elevenbasetwo.com) for a while now. I realize that it's never worked in IE9 and I believe the issue to be because the Response Headers do not include any kind of charset declaration.

Could you look into sending a proper charset back with the headers and perhaps update your example URL when you get a chance?

Thanks.

Add an FSF or OSI approved free software license

Ziptastic looks really cool, but I don't see a license anywhere.

FSF approved licenses: https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses
OSI approved licenses: http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

No Mexican postal codes

Please add support for Mexican postal codes. A reference for these is: http://www.geonames.org/postalcode-search.html?q=52926&country=MX for a 52926 postal code, for example.

How to do Postal Codes Work for Canada?

Hey Guys,

I am stumped on how to do the Canadian Postal Codes, I need to make this plugin work for Canada and the US, any ideas?

This line doesnt seem to be working requests[zip] = $.getJSON('http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/v2/CA/' + zip);
Conor

Maxmind has free post code mappings for Canada

http://www.maxmind.com/app/postalcode

zipcode held as integer

For global support the zipcode needs to be kept as a string.

See this discussion on zipcodes/post codes/postal codes:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/747802/integer-vs-string-in-database

Swiss ZIP Codes

You can either get them via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_codes_of_Switzerland or the API of admin.ch: http://api.geo.admin.ch/main/wsgi/doc/build/services/sdiservices.html (eg http://api.geo.admin.ch/main/wsgi/swisssearch/geocoding?query=8001&format=raw)

Prototype.js demo

Could you please link to https://github.com/walterdavis/ziptastic-prototype

Support full Canadian postal codes

Canadian postal codes have two parts, separated by a space (e.g. "M4C 1B5").

The first part (called the Forward Sortation Area -- "M4C") is generally equivalent to the 5-digit ZIP code in the US in that it denotes a town (or section of a larger city), and is what the Ziptastic API currently supports:

http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/v2/CA/M4C

The second part (called the Local Delivery Unit -- "1B5") drills down to more of a street or block level, much like the last four digits on a US ZIP+4 code.

The major difference between US zip codes and Canadian postal codes is that while I, as an American, couldn't name the full ZIP+4 for any of the homes I've ever lived in, Canadians know and use the full postal code.

Currently, querying the Ziptastic API on the Canadian full postal code (including both the FSA and the LDU) returns an empty result set:

http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/v2/CA/M4C1B5 (and http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/v2/CA/M4C+1B5 )

{}

Whereas querying the US API for the ZIP+4, while it's used much less frequently, works correctly:

http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/v2/US/84040-5111

{"city": "Layton", "state": "Utah", "country": "US"}

Can you make the Canadian version similar to the US, so that an API call using the full postal code returns the same information as the partial 3-character version? Filter the input so that your database query actually only looks for the FSA, no matter what the input looks like. It appears you're already doing something similar to knock down a ZIP+4 to the 5-digit zip code in the US.

Leading zeros return empty set

"I think it's somewhat of an issue that leading 0s are ignored, e.g.
returns results: http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/4901
does not: http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/04901

A major validation for zip codes is checking for 5 digits, like in the example found here:
http://css-tricks.com/examples/Zip/"

Add US State abbreviation (disqus comment)

"Hey guys, really great tool. We'd really like to use it for our website but have one question... is there any reason why US state abbreviation was removed from v2/, and is there any chance of adding a new key:value with the abbreviation to the new version? Thanks!"

Handling of ambigious zipcodes

curl http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com?zip=10115

returns:

{"country": "US", "state": "NY", "city": "NEW YORK"}

however, it should indicate that this is also a match.

{"country": "DE", "state": "BERLIN", "city": "BERLIN"}