Very useful. Saves the user 2 to 3 steps. In rare instances where it returns the wrong city, they can modify the returned values. Probably want to skip ziptastic for non U.S. IP addresses.
Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
21–30 of 113 posts
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#22Where's the data from?
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#23Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#24Unfortunately in some cases a zipcode is in fact not enough, as it's possible for a zipcode to spread across multiple towns. However, if you have a full 9 digit zipcode then you can in fact always determine. However, even if you can't always determine this information exactly, a zipcode should be enough to pre-populate these fields for you most of the time, and in those rare cases which they don't a choice can be pre…
You could always have the city state and country pop up as separate, pre-filled input boxes once the zip code is entered, so the user has a chance to correct it.
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#25If you're going to do this, do the whole enchilada: zip code + person's name ought to give you their whole address for 99% of the population (hint: voter records). Well, 95%, considering such records are often out of date.
The problem is this will likely spook many people - "how does this website know my street address?"
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#26Just as a note, I know that for e-commerce shopping cart forms, we specifically force users to enter their address information and zip code. No matter what you think, users aren't paying attention to what they enter in the forms. Forcing them to enter their address and zipcode allows you to do a cross check to make sure they entered everything correctly. You may find it annoying, but when it prevents people from orde…
Totally agree! The jQuery plugin that I started working on will actually just populate those fields in the form so they can be changed after the fact. Feel free to contribute! https://github.com/daspecster/ziptastic-jquery-plugin
If you are using jQuery, then why `var client = new XMLHttpRequest();` for the love of god, embrace `$.ajax()`
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#27My big pet peeve is when they ask you what type of credit card you're using, when that is easily determined by the first four digits of the CC number. Thankfully, more and more web sites are figuring this out.
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#28Unfortunately in some cases a zipcode is in fact not enough, as it's possible for a zipcode to spread across multiple towns. However, if you have a full 9 digit zipcode then you can in fact always determine. However, even if you can't always determine this information exactly, a zipcode should be enough to pre-populate these fields for you most of the time, and in those rare cases which they don't a choice can be pre…
For example: 94062 can be either Woodside or Redwood City or Emerald Hills.
Yup, here the USPS response to 94062
https://tools.usps.com/go/ZipLookupResultsAction!input.actio...
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#29The whole world has postal codes. Some are simpler than others. It would be nice to see an API like this one that supported more than just one country.
Not everyone does.
"In February 2005, 117 of the 190 member countries of the Universal Postal Union had postal code systems. Countries that do not have national systems include Ireland and Panama."
Re: Ziptastic: Isn't a zipcode enough?
#30I love APIs. One recommendation though would be to change the server response slightly for the API call. In Chrome, it had me download a file instead of showing the response in the browser. I think it might be because the response has a Content-Type "text/json" instead of "application/json".
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/477816/the-right-json-con...