The libpostal developers have released bindings for a number of different languages, which can be found at the Github organization page: https://github.com/openvenues
Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
#22I work for UPS as software developer and surprisingly, I work for the department that is responsible for parsing addresses and matching them with actual physical addresses. We cover US, CA & EU (incl. UK). In our department, we have a guy whose entire career at UPS is nothing but maintaining library that parses addresses. It is very hard to get things right, unless you maintain that library all the time. Genuinely wi…
BTW, I'm a guy who has been building address parsing software since 2005. ( geocoder.ca, geocode.xyz ) It is HARD. Currently I'm using machine learning similarly to libpostal to improve my software. It works better than libpostal in some cases (for eg: USA: Start libpostal: 751 FAiR OKS AVENUE PASADNA CA road => fair oks avenue pasadna state => ca house_number => 751 Geocoder.ca 751 FAiR OKS AVENUE PASADNA CA https:/…
I think that there is a good solution: supervised learning/segmentation with direct user verification.
You have the user enter a free form address, and then translate it into a structured address. If they correct any fields, you look at those and try to figure out if the final result is correct or not, and integrate that.
Maybe this could be done as a service with iframes (like ReCaptcha); and since the information in a full address is basically entirely public knowledge (at least in the U.S.), you can keep all of it around in full detail.
Re: Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
#23I work for UPS as software developer and surprisingly, I work for the department that is responsible for parsing addresses and matching them with actual physical addresses. We cover US, CA & EU (incl. UK). In our department, we have a guy whose entire career at UPS is nothing but maintaining library that parses addresses. It is very hard to get things right, unless you maintain that library all the time. Genuinely wi…
Seems like this work should be open source, is it already? If not why? Publicly funded work like this seems like it should by default be open source?
Re: Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
#24I work for UPS as software developer and surprisingly, I work for the department that is responsible for parsing addresses and matching them with actual physical addresses. We cover US, CA & EU (incl. UK). In our department, we have a guy whose entire career at UPS is nothing but maintaining library that parses addresses. It is very hard to get things right, unless you maintain that library all the time. Genuinely wi…
Not your issue, but it makes me so angry that UPS charges me for address corrections ($12 a pop). The UPS supplied software often fails to identify missing suite number, can't figure out "State Route 123" vs "SR 123", etc. UPS is financially rewarded for bugs. Argh :)
Sorry to hear that.
I would advise you to call UPS and dispute those charges. If the address existed for a while and you can google it, than it is definitely a bug.
Re: Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not your issue, but it makes me so angry that UPS charges me for address corrections ($12 a pop). The UPS supplied software often fails to identify missing suite number, can't figure out "State Route 123" vs "SR 123", etc. UPS is financially rewarded for bugs. Argh :)
Sorry to hear that. I would advise you to call UPS and dispute those charges. If the address existed for a while and you can google it, than it is definitely a bug.
Appreciate it. It's more the policy that's irritating. For example, "missing suite" usually just means the driver has to look at the business name on the shipping label and identify it in the strip mall. $12 charged to the shipper for a few seconds of thought where the UPS software didn't identify "missing suite".
Re: Libpostal: A C library for parsing/normalizing street addresses around the world
#26I'm amazed that someone wrote something that's mostly string processing in pure C at this late date.
Building strings in C can be painful, but parsing them is not too bad. I suppose security is another big concern, especially with something built explicitly to process user-supplied data.