Show HN: ZipLocate, a free API for zip code geolocation

by nathancahill • 12 years ago

140 55 12 years ago

moontear• 12 years ago

Looks nice, kudos for offering it for free - 5$/month is still not nothing. It would be grand if you included "US" somewhere besides the domain, because the service geolocates US zipcodes, not international zip codes.

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

ZIP codes are the name for US-specific postal codes. International postal codes are not zip codes.

DoubleMalt• 12 years ago

Very often ZIP code is used as alias for postal code even in international context. I see "zip code" more often than "postal code" on international address forms.

gkoberger• 12 years ago

Do you have any plans to do the other way around? That's important for converting the browser's geolocation data into something usable.

mischanix• 12 years ago

Ah, but then the data wouldn't fit into 1.6MB!

That is to say, going the other way is a bit more computationally intensive.

nostromo• 12 years ago

We have a free API that includes IP to approximate area code, but not zip code, if that's of use to you.

https://www.dailycred.com/api/info.json

A few of our clients needed this, so we just made it open to everyone.

It's based on GeoIP and ua-parser.

http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/

https://github.com/tobie/ua-parser

fasouto• 12 years ago

Check http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/developerdocs#coordinates2... and http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/developerdocs#coordinates2... You can use these APIs locally via vagrant or launch a amazon AMI http://www.datasciencetoolkit.org/developerdocs#setup

freyfogle• 12 years ago

you may enjoy: http://geocoder.opencagedata.com

we aggregate OSM, Datascience tool kit, geonames, and more. All feedback welcome

bradleyjg• 12 years ago

Interestingly enough zip codes don't cover the entire US. Not even the entire continental US. Lat/Long 40, -110 (in NE Utah) is a good test case to make sure your code handles that circumstance.

dsernst• 12 years ago

Does what it says. Simple, free, & open source. What could be better?

mikkom• 12 years ago

This might sound silly but you should actually have a "plus" plan or something that you charge for - free services have a problem of suddenly disappearing without any notice. Paid customers ensure that service will be available in the future too.

dm2• 12 years ago

The code is on github so you can host it on your own server fairly easily.

The website says that it's very lightweight (everything stored in memory) and currently running on a low cost server.

Download a copy now and save it just in case, if your business really depends on it then it would be better to host yourself anyways.

rotten• 12 years ago

How about sharing an itunes wish list or suggesting beer you like or something that people who appreciate the service can thank you with?

bluthru• 12 years ago

Or a donate/flattr button.

nathancahill6• 12 years ago

Fair enough, added.

jdimov• 12 years ago

Is there something similar for UK postcodes?

mseebach2• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, while the data definitely exists (and UK postal codes are much smaller), it's copyrighted by the Royal Mail.

ars• 12 years ago

Host it in the US, there is no database copyright in the US.

petepete• 12 years ago

CodePoint Open has been freely available for a number of years. It doesn't include delivery endpoints but for geolocating English, Scottish and Welsh (but, alas, not Northern Irish) postcodes it's fine.

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/prod...

alnorth• 12 years ago

http://www.uk-postcodes.com/

davea37• 12 years ago

http://mapit.mysociety.org/

somewhatoff• 12 years ago

I made up this demo:

http://whatpostcodeamiin.com

which uses browser location finding to tell you what postcode you are in (more or less). If you'd be interested, I have a beta API which will return full postcode info based on latitude/longitude; it's kind of beta, but I'd be happy to provide access if you need it.

riquito• 12 years ago

This made me remember a cool analogous project

http://api.zippopotam.us/

cel1ne2• 12 years ago

Why not use Geonames: http://www.geonames.org/ ?

cel1ne2• 12 years ago

You can also download all the zip-codes for many countries from them: http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/

ins0• 12 years ago

really nice thanks! i made a small php class to get work done. https://github.com/ins0/php-simple-ziplocate

shekhar101• 12 years ago

Nice and free. Thanks a lot. Will suggest you to add Gittip. Might help you in releasing some more similar projects for free.

nathancahill6• 12 years ago

Thanks, added.

danmanstx• 12 years ago

Ziptastic is another option that seems to work well. http://getziptastic.com also plays nice with javascript and has a ruby gem.

nathancahill6• 12 years ago

Ziptastic is awesome. Part of the inspiration to build ZipLocate.

chrismeller• 12 years ago

You should probably mention the caveats when using ZCTA's to get a list of zips... Namely that they don't include all zip codes, don't get updated as quickly, and may not actually represent the same thing as a zip code:

http://catalog.data.gov/dataset/tiger-line-shapefile-2013-20...

nathancahill6• 12 years ago

Yes, you're right. Added to the page.

couchand5• 12 years ago

This reminded me of a little suggestion by Bret Victor (http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#reducing_interaction).

Imagine honing in on familiar areas simply by typing the first few digits of a zip code—type “9” to immediately zoom into the US west coast, followed by “4” to zoom into the SF bay area and then “5” for the east bay. Because of the immediate feedback, the user can stop typing when she gets close enough, and use relative navigation from there.

I coded up an example a little while ago (http://andrewcou.ch/zip-to-it/).

ericfrederich• 12 years ago

Are you keeping stats on your request? I'm curious how high 90210 stands out.

couchand5• 12 years ago

That's a great idea. (Un)fortunately it's all client-side.

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

This is really cool, but ultimately not that practical because it doesn't display the zipcode boundaries.

If it were integrated with zipcode boundary information as this [ http://www.usnaviguide.com/zip.htm ] site does with google maps, it would be pretty awesome.

couchand5• 12 years ago

Interesting idea. I didn't really try too hard making it a complete product, since I was only interested in proving the navigation concept that Bret Victor had described. But that's a good idea, and if you're interested feel free to fork it and add that capability!

sejje• 12 years ago

I think this zooms in too far on the last level. Very nice, though!

couchand5• 12 years ago

I had the same concern when I built it, but the data source I was using only provides centroid information, not boundaries. I thought for a while trying to come up with a solution and ended up ignoring it, since I was mainly interested in a proof of concept. If you'd like to fork it and improve you're more than welcome to!

harpastum• 12 years ago

Another example of the same zip code interaction idea, with some pretty UI: http://benfry.com/zipdecode/

bajsejohannes• 12 years ago

Very nice. Small enough that I can read and understand every line of code, and it still does something useful.

One thing I don't get, is why you're not using the zip code as the primary key (or have any other sort of index on it). The id isn't even used as far as I can tell. Is it just blazingly fast enough as it is?

disdev• 12 years ago

Personally, I always use either an auto-incremented ID or a GUID. I don't like using a real value of the object as a key. Generally, I think it's good practice, but you're right... I'd index off of that.

nathancahill6• 12 years ago

The database is mostly an abstraction layer for other people to get up and running with the API. On ZipLocate.us everything is cached in memory using Varnish, so API calls never even hit the database. When data is updated, updated zip codes are just refreshed in the cache.

Like disdev, I always use an auto-incrementing id, but you're right that the index should be on the zip code instead of the id.

johnnylambada• 12 years ago

Thanks nathancahill!

Here's a 44 line node script to exercise it with:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/johnnylambada/commandline-...

$ chmod a+x ziplocate

$ ./ziplocate ll -z 90210

latitude : 34.0908301410233

longitude: -118.409045888318

jgalt212• 12 years ago

This is a pretty small and mostly importantly, relatively static database. Why not cache it locally rather than access as a web service.

That being said, zip+4 is a bigger DB. Although, I have heard those last four digits are meaningless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newman_%28Seinfeld%29

cjlm• 12 years ago

Anything similar to this available for Canada?

Show HN: ZipLocate, a free API for zip code geolocation

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