Re: International Addresses

Post #106,171

6/15/03 12:57:07 PM

[link|http://www.bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html|BitBoost.com]
Here is a nice page on international addresses, and has a lot of links to pages with more information.

The upshot of it is that internationaly, the most common format looks something like this.

Address1
Address2
Postal Code Location

Where Postal Code is a numeric code like our ZIP, and Location is some sort of city/region identification. But there are enough variations that it gets hard to code every possibility. Unless you do a lot of international buisness, I would recommend making international address just Address1 to Address4 and let the person entering it work it out.

Jay

Post #106,175

by kmself

6/15/03 4:56:30 PM

Suggestions WRT int'l addressing

You've got two issues: data, and presentation.

\r\n\r\n

Most of the time, it's a mix of address, additional address (call that address 2, and CRC, it's not always used here either), city, state/province, postal code, and country. Address itself is street number, street. And/or building box, suite, apartment number, or P.O. Box.

\r\n\r\n

Then you have the problem of presenting it. Eg: German street addresses are expressed as "Street ##", so "Konigstrasse 101". Then postal code, then city, then country (you'll note that the Staadt (state) is omitted). There is a relatively small number (no more than a few hundred tops, allowing each country its own variant). I'd keep this as a format specifying structure, possibly tied to the national code so you don't have to store an additional field with each address. You'd express it as ranking street number, street, building suffix, city, state/province, postal code, country. I'm growing increasingly partial to printf() notation for such formats in various contexts.

\r\n\r\n

There's a good book on data modeling I picked up years ago which addresses this and similar problems. Know that the issues seem trivial but aren't, and have been the cause of more than one heated, hours-long argument between professionals.

--\r\n Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n [link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n [link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n \r\n Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n

Post #106,193

by cforde

6/16/03 1:24:10 AM

postal codes

don't count on postal codes being numeric. Canadian postal codes are
"ana nan". "a" is alphabetic and "n" is numeric. Note there is a space between the triplets.

If you want to write a letter to Santa Claus, his postal code is very easy to remember: H0H 0H0.

Have fun,
Carl Forde

Post #106,201

by Meerkat

6/16/03 8:51:56 AM

And then an Australian chips in...

As per the rest of the world (it seems) address 2 isn't always used. Though as I life in a flat, some of mail is in the form:

Unit xx
yy My Street

instead of the more usual "xx/yy My Street"

Post codes are always 4 digits.
Phone number are anything from 6 to 10 digits. 6-digit ones (starting with 13) are for companies and info services and the like. Residential are 8 digits, with a 2-digit state prefix if you're ringing another state. Mobile phone number are 10 digits.

Oh, and state abbrevitations have two or three letters. It makes it easy to spot the direct mail companies that use inflexible American software when you see NS instead of NSW on the envelope :)

There are probably a number of exceptions to the above rules but that's about as pedantic as I'm going to forget, and you may well all be asleep by now anyway :)

John. Busy lad.

Post #106,646

by static

6/20/03 8:18:47 AM

Further notes.

In no particular order...

* UK post codes are a combination of letters and numbers. Not living there myself, I don't know the pattern, but the length does not seem fixed.

* Addresses in some part of Asia routinely require 3 lines. Plus locality and postal code! I learned that writing software for a school that had a lot of international students from China and Taiwan.

* For a way-out example, Japanese addresses, particularly those in cities, do not have street names or street numbers! Instead they sub-divide from locality down three more levels (machi, chome and banchi) then buildings are numbered in their banchi. E.g, Kodansha Publishing is at 17-41 Otawa 1-chome, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-8652.

Wade.

Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed

Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please

-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.

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