Re:Plenty Of Zip Codes For Form Auto-Completion
by michaelt on Tuesday December 04, 2012 @09:50AM
(#4871117)
You can get postcode/easting/northing for free using Ordnance Survey's Code-Point Open product [1]. That'll let you check a postcode exists, but it doesn't help with address auto-completion, as it doesn't give you a street name.
[1] http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/code-poin...
Address lookup or just validation?
For validation, there's an official regex (archived, but still useful) http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/govtalk/schemasstandards/e-g....
For address lookup there are a couple of ways to go about it.
1. You can buy the rights to the Royal Mail's database. You get to parse the sucker yourself. http://www.poweredbypaf.com/end-user/products/paf-raw-data/
2. You can use a third party system, either over the web, or choose a solution you can host internally. Depending on the type of system you buy you pay by the lookup or by the user (mostly internally hosted systems).