[Talk-GB] Postcode finder based on OSM data

[Matt Williams]

On 17 March 2011 13:49, Derick Rethans <osm at derickrethans.nl> wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Mar 2011, Andy Mabbett wrote:
>> On 16 March 2011 19:51, Matt Williams <lists at milliams.com> wrote:
>>
>> > For the last week I've been working on a sort of 'replacement' for the
>> > Royal Mail's postcode/address finder
>>
>> That's great; and I trust that my constructive feedback won't be taken
>> as dissing your achievment...
>
> Same here, I like this!

Thank you :)

>> You return nothing for "B1 1BB" (Birmingham Council House), which is
>> tagged "addr:postcode=B1 1BB"
>
> I found something else odd too:
>
> http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/search/?postcode=NW6
>
> returns:
>
> # NW6 7JN   http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/NW6%207JN/
> # nw6 7ny   http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/search/?postcode=NW6
>
> http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/NW6%207JN/
> works
>
> http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/NW6%207NY/ (can't find)
> and
> http://milliams.dev.openstreetmap.org/postcodefinder/nw6%207ny/ (404)
> do not work

Hmm, this seems like a bug in my code somewhere. Thanks for the
detailed report, I'll look into this as soon as I get home from work.

>> For a common address, such as "2 High Street", you return multiple
>> results, with no obvious distinguishing feature. Please include the
>> "addr:city" value in the results (if present); and allow searches to
>> be limited by that tag.
>
> Actually, "city" wouldn't always work. There are f.e. 3 "Victoria Road"s
> in London.

Very true but at least it's a good start. As I said in another
message, I either need to do some spatial processing myself (which I
can't at the moment since I'm simply parsing the planet file in a
SAX-type way) or use Nominatim somehow.

-- 
Matt Williams
http://milliams.com