I'm developing a website and need postal codes for as many countries as possible. All I need is City, State, and zip/postal code. I found zipcodeworld.com but, they're products are a lot more than I need. Wondering if anyone knows of a low cost solution?
Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#2I use what came with freeside, my billing system. http://www.freeside.biz/freeside/ but it's not complete, so a better solution, if someone has one, would be great.
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#3What language are you using? I don't know of a datasource for it but I'm familiar with the Django project's localflavor contrib app:
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/contrib/localflavor...
You can also try searching through programmable web:
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#4Here's a few http://www.geonames.org/postal-codes/
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#5Also, keep in mind, don't make the Zip Code required. Some countries (Ireland being the most prominent) don't have them.
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#6Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#7Address formats are different all over the world. Lots of places call them "postcodes" not zip codes (e.g. the UK). Some places have no postcodes (e.g. Ireland). Lots of places don't have 'states'. And the US has lots of 'cities' whereas lots of places would have local towns or counties.
You usually need addresses to send someone something. I'd suggest just putting in a text field and letting the user just type it in freeform.
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#8Also, keep in mind, don't make the Zip Code required. Some countries (Ireland being the most prominent) don't have them.
Also, don't make state required, most countries don't have them.
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#9What do you need the postal codes for? How are you going to use them?
Re: Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?
#10Address formats are different all over the world. Lots of places call them "postcodes" not zip codes (e.g. the UK). Some places have no postcodes (e.g. Ireland). Lots of places don't have 'states'. And the US has lots of 'cities' whereas lots of places would have local towns or counties. You usually need addresses to send someone something. I'd suggest just putting in a text field and letting the user just type it in…
And you can check that the address is sane using a geocoder. Both Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps have freely-accessible APIs for that.