Postal Code to Address

[wpearsall]

OK... HOPEFULLY this is an easy one?

the club i work in has finnaly decided to take up the chance for a computerised membership system...

i've got it all working, all except for a few extra things, you know... those finishing touches...

anyway, gaffer said about how when you phone up like BT or that they say "Post code" "house number" "Ahhh, so that 123 Street Road, Oldbury?" etc
is is possible to get a list of post codes with the addresses [street, post town] etc?

any code been done?

being a small club post codes within about 20 miles should do it.. but thats still a hell of a lot of post codes to go searching for, since my dad lives two streets away and his last three are 7EN where as mine are 6DZ - meh,,, ideas?

I would say B61 - B70 would do, but then we got dudley just a mile up the road, and we got members from DY1, DY2 and DY5 so :S lol... any help?

cheers

[disruptivehair]

OK... HOPEFULLY this is an easy one?

the club i work in has finnaly decided to take up the chance for a computerised membership system...

i've got it all working, all except for a few extra things, you know... those finishing touches...

anyway, gaffer said about how when you phone up like BT or that they say "Post code" "house number" "Ahhh, so that 123 Street Road, Oldbury?" etc
is is possible to get a list of post codes with the addresses [street, post town] etc?

any code been done?

being a small club post codes within about 20 miles should do it.. but thats still a hell of a lot of post codes to go searching for, since my dad lives two streets away and his last three are 7EN where as mine are 6DZ - meh,,, ideas?

I would say B61 - B70 would do, but then we got dudley just a mile up the road, and we got members from DY1, DY2 and DY5 so :S lol... any help?

cheers

A company I used to work for used the Royal Mail's PAF subscription and it costs £150 for a single-user license; if I recall correctly for them it cost several hundred pounds a year for the file, updates, etc.

http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/j...5&catId=400084

There are probably other dbs online but I couldn't vouch for their authenticity.

[lintz]

I know AusPost (in OZ ) gives a free list of all postcodes and towns within Australia. I used the info in one of my first apps.

Like disruptivehair said, there are probable lists available (free) you just need to search.

[smUX]

I'm looking around for the same thing and there's very little that you can do as there's nothing online except for the PAF system...however, on an amateur level, you could search google for the postcode and look at any addresses that come up...or there are other programs out there that will "clean up" addresses based on the postcode.

I would assume that the postcode system is copyrighted to the royal mail, so if you use it you're breaking the law if you're not paying them for the privledge :-)

One suggestion for you is to have a postcode database that builds as you go...when you get new members you ask for their postcode and if it's not in the database you ask for the rest of the details...it's only a small club, as you say...no point paying royal mail so much :-)

I am able to get a list of postcodes if you want to manually look them up to add to your database...just the postcode, no names...give me a set of areas (the first set of digits) and I'll sort it out

[wpearsall]

i did actually think that the address could be done like you said... BUT: as u said about copy right...

is that true? [anyone know?] theres has got to be some reason companies pay 200 quid for a db, it caw JUST be ease? can it? mind, thinkin of bt, the amount of time it saves to take just the post code instead of the whole address...

but i guess the other thing is build it up... they cant stop you doin that? can they? :S

i mean, fetch the post code from another table if it exists, if not then "do you wish to update address into postcode database... easy enough... i'll have to sort out a list of post codes... but definate ones so far are: (B62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 69) DY2, DY5, DY6

cheers.

[smUX]

If you were to collate a list of addresses based on postcodes for personal use, you're building it *from* private data and there's no copyright issues (the address is "owned" by your customers and they give you permission to use it as you wish in your database as long as it's not personally identifiable to them...many companies do it :-)) but if you were to collate it from elsewhere Royal Mail might throw a hissy fit...esp. if you were taking away a sale of their PAF service :-)

And it's not just ease of use...for instance, a postcode is only 6-7 bytes (plus 1-3 for the house number) while a full address could be anything between 20 and 50 bytes...all you would need to store is the postcode if you have a database of full addresses to convert it back when required, and you save a hell of a load of space...plus there's sites out there that can convert a postcode to lat/long co-ordinates to pinpoint where exactly a place is or distances between places (I found one recently that was free and gave exact details, and streetmap also give long/lat for postcodes)

Plus there's also the "oooooh" factor from them taking your postcode and knowing your address, but that's hardly new any more :-P

I think that the main reason here with the d/b sold by Royal Mail is the fact that the space saved by storage is so great if you have many instances of address data, plus possibly the fact that all you need to confirm a full address is a correct postcode (if you're a company dealing with addresses from people as long as you can read their postcode on their form you can work out what the actual address is...that's why postcode is in capitals and has its own box on forms :-))

Edit: Also, here's the list of postcodes...this isn't specifically the ones you want, this is ALL OF THEM :-)

http://geopostcode.com/ov2/list.zip

I've also sent this to you directly so that you get it

[wpearsall]

cheers mate well i guess i'll add it to the db then ta