powerhouse has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am just wondering, I see a lot of sites these days, that have it where you can give a form your zip code and it will lookup the city that corresponds to that zip code, and if a few choices it will ask them, which city it is.

Is there a module that can do this, or where can I find information on a way to do this?

I searched Cpan for zipcode and state but could not find anything useful.

Any tips you have would be very much appreciated!


thx,
Richard

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Zip Code Module?
by sifen (Beadle) on Dec 17, 2004 at 00:35 UTC

    I think Geo::PostalCode would be at least a look. It reads the zipcode/city data from Bearkly DB's that you can get from http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/zip1999.html.

    It seems pretty stright forwards, the relivant section from the docs is below:

    $gp = Geo::PostalCode->new(db_dir => $db_dir);

    [download]

    Returns a new Geo::PostalCode object using the postalcode.db, latlon.db, and city.db Berkeley Database files in $db_dir. 

    $record = $gp->lookup_postal_code(postal_code => $postal_code);

    [download]

    Returns a hash reference containing four keys:

    * lat - Latitude
    * lon - Longitude
    * city - City
    * state - State two-letter abbreviation.

    Hope that's of some use to you. . .

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      I use this module frequently, and it works great. I'd highly recommend it. You'll need to download the postal code data before it will complete "make test" succesfully.
[reply]
        What do you mean, "download the postal code data"?

        I tried this module, I installed it, using WHM (a cPanel Product) with the Install a Perl Module, it appeared to work ok, however, when I use the 'sample' code: 
          use Geo::PostalCode;

  my $gp = Geo::PostalCode->new(db_dir => ".");

  my $record = $gp->lookup_postal_code(postal_code => '07302');
  my $lat   = $record->{lat};
  my $lon   = $record->{lon};
  my $city  = $record->{city};
  my $state = $record->{state};

  my $distance = $gp->calculate_distance(postal_codes => ['07302','100
+04']);

  $record = $gp->lookup_city_state(city => "Jersey City",state => "NJ"
+);
  $lat          = $record->{lat};
  $lon          = $record->{lon};
  my $postal_codes = $record->{postal_codes};

  $postal_codes = $gp->nearby_postal_codes(lat => $lat, lon => $lon,
                                                   distance => 50);
print qq~<br>
 City is ~ . $city . qq~<br>
 State is ~ . $state . qq~<br>
 Latitude is ~ . $lat . qq~<br>
 Longitude is ~ . $lon . qq~<br>
 <br>
 Nearby Zips are: $postal_codes~;

        [download]
        (ran as a test) and I had this 'output':
        City is
        State is
        Latitude is
        Longitude is

        Nearby Zips are: ARRAY(0x8674890)

        So, could what you said, be the reason why it's not working?

        I would appreciate your help.
        thx,
        Richard
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Zip Code Module?
by kvale (Monsignor) on Dec 17, 2004 at 00:26 UTC
    I don't know of any module that has its own zipcode database, but there are CPAN modules, like Scrape::USPS::ZipLookup::Address, that scrape a USPS web page to extract city info. It is suitable for non-commerical use -- look at the site for the full terms of use.

    -Mark

[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom