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Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be USA-only or not. It seems to ask for 'country', so I assume it's aimed at the whole world.

And here's where reality disagrees with your simple organisation.

* First "zip code" is mostly an American term, "post code" is used in other anglosphere countries.

* Not all countries have "everyone is in a city" model, this seems to happen in the USA, where 'city' is often an administrative division, and you can have a city of 1,000 people. "County" would be used in Ireland & UK.

* In some places Country = State, e.g. Ireland. The law & Consitution there consistantly refers to 'Irish State'. Likewise the European Union has 27 member states. Each State is a Country. (Some States (e.g. UK) are made up of several countries).

* Some places don't have post codes (or zip codes) at all. (e.g. Ireland).

Addresses are hard.

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On the third bullet point, that's just a word with two meanings, not a country-to-country difference. The USA is also a State in that sense: it has a Department of State to handle state-to-state affairs (i.e. foreign affairs), is a Member State of the United Nations, etc. The use of the term "state" for a subnational division, roughly akin to a Canadian "province", is a different meaning with the same spelling.

The same is true in some European countries; for example, Austria is a member state of the EU, but its subnational entities (Länder in German) are conventionally called states in English also.

The use of the term "state" for a subnational division, roughly akin to a Canadian "province", is a different meaning with the same spelling.

Fun fact, Ireland has provinces (4 of them). However they aren't used for addresses, only for sports or cultural reasons. So Dublin (the city) is in the State of Ireland, and the Province of Lenister. Sometimes the web forms will have a field saying "State/Province", and I wonder which to put in.

The Government in Ireland is currently in the process of introducing postcodes http://www.dcenr.gov.ie/Communications/Postal/Postcodes.htm

They've been talking about that for years. It won't happen. We don't have the money, and the gov doesn't want to waste money on mostly pointless systems, i.e. a repeat of when they tried to bring in evoting

And you can also call all of Austria a `Land' in German. Same applies to Germany.

Yeah this doesn't work at all if you live outside USA. The post code for Auckland CBD (in New Zealand) is 1010.

So if I try http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/?zip=1010

It gives: {"country": "US", "state": "MA", "city": "BRIMFIELD"}

I'm guessing it's a leading zero problem, since all US Zipcodes are 5 digits (or nine). Going to http://zip.elevenbasetwo.com/?zip=01010 gives the same response noted above.

Same for Australian zip codes e.g. 2000 (Sydney) returns a 404 (doesn't exist)

In France, Paris, Lyon and Marseille have multiple postal codes, and some postal codes are used for multiple cities (postal codes were attributed to delivery offices in 1972, and new offices now use the number of the nearest numbered office).

(And no, Ziptastic doesn't work for French postal codes.)

Getting things delivered to the Republic of Ireland is a major pain because of this. I've had deliveries delayed because the company in question doesn't believe my address is real or correct. It doesn't contain numbers, the word 'street' or a postcode. Some sites also flag your order if you put 0000 in as a postcode for example. Some enterprising guys have created an unofficial "Location Code"[1] for Ireland to help solve some of these problems but it all comes back to faulty assumptions.

[1] http://www.myloc8ion.com/

Despite the mentioned problems with this method I still think it is a great start and should be implemented more often. The U.S. GDP is three times larger than any other economy, there is no doubt that for a lot of sites, US addresses are the norm. Even if it is not 100% accurate it would still be nice to pre-populate fields and let the city be changed if it is incorrect.

The U.S. GDP is three times larger than any other economy

Eh? The GDP of the European Union is larger than the USA.

(A lot of this now hinges on how you defined 'country' or 'economy'. I'll point out that most law comes from european level and EU passports say "European Union" on the front :P )

Brazilian post codes map to [segments of] streets, with the format XXXXX-XXX. The API response for a brazilian post code is just "404", invalid if the application was expecting JSON.

It doesn't even work (perfectly) within the USA. Zip codes are so unreliable that they're not even used by other government agencies/projects - take a look at the Census, which uses ZCTAs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code_Tabulation_Area

The reason for this is that the USPS can change the zip codes without warning (and furthermore, leaves some areas undefined), whereas the Census needs reliable boundaries and fixed geographic areas.

Doesn't work for German zip codes. Returns 404 or some US city with the same code.

ZIP Code is a trademark of the US postal service; so yea, US only.

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