Address Validation Using the Google Maps API: A better way to enter addresses? | Hacker News Reader

Address Validation Using the Google Maps API: A better way to enter addresses?

telnet80.com

I highly recommend the MelissaData.com web services for address verification: http://www.melissadata.com/dqt/websmart-global.htm

One single web service that can validate addresses for just about every industrialized country.

Also, if you are interested in seeing example "correct" addresses for many countries, see Address Doctor. http://www.addressdoctor.com/en/countries_data/countries5.as...

Both of these companies are leaders in their field.

This makes a lot of sense.

However, I'm growing wary of "dependency sprawl", where the functionality of a web application is tied to an increasing number of other services. That said, as far as uptime goes Google is hard to beat.

I agree with you about "dependency sprawl". Depending on how critical address-verification is to your system, you could also implement the USPS verification into the workflow as an alternate or a fall-back. They have an API which can be used to verify the formatting of an address is acceptable.

http://www.usps.com/webtools/address.htm

I agree, this is very useful. Entering address information into separate fields is something we have, sadly, come to accept. From a user standpoint though, this makes no sense. I write my address on an envelope, and the US post office delivers it just fine. Why would I need to separate my address?

One thing to keep inmind is the Geocoding limit. If this is used on a busy website, you'll need to build in checks:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/faq.html#geocoder_limit

I made some comments on the user's blog entry.

For our company, we would have loved to use Google for all our web API needs for addresses, but we can't, due to corporate firewall restrictions and the map display restriction mentioned by a reader's comment on that blog entry. Also, don't mistake this for true address validation, which is expensive.

Major problem with this approach is that textarea doesn't have an autocomplete feature. Having single line textboxes for each field allows me to tap the down arrow and have previous entries listed. With a multiline textbox I have to manually type all my information in.

Also... really only works for the US only. Canada is not half bad but Google returns an invalid postal code (due to licensing restrictions or some such). Outside of US/Canada accuracy falls way off to the point of being almost useless.

I hacked up one of the first address validation services on the Internet: http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html , back in 1998(?).

I've since moved on, and the backend database hasn't been updated in nearly a decade. But it works fairly well, and can take free-form addresses as input.

I'm surprised there aren't more such free services out there.

I found this surprising also. It seems like a very common task, but for the life of me I couldn't find a service to split a human-formatted address (i.e., one <input type=text>) into its component, verified parts. Some good solutions presented in this thread though.

Sorry to comment spam, but, Yahoo has a "PlaceFinder" API that does geocoding (and address cleanup): http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/

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