Formatting a physical US address

[Jewtus]

I'm struggling to find a good way of doing this. I have a physical address that has no delimiters in it and I'm trying to make it output a formatted version of the original string. For example:

123 Happy Lane New York City NY 100219809

I've been able to format it a bit:

$StringLength=StringLen($Address)
$Part=StringRight($Address,11)
$survivorState=StringLeft($Part,2)
$survivorZip=StringRight($Part,9)
$Formedaddress=StringLeft($Address,$StringLength-12)&","&$State&","&$zip

but I cannot figure out a good way of splitting the address from the city. Anyone have any clever Ideas?

 

[kylomas]

Jewtus,

Addresses come in a bunch of formats, as you are probably finding out.  Ignoring the fact that there could be routing lines, ATTN, Suite, CO, etc and dealing with addresses in the format that you presented this is how I would start:

1. Get the zip code (last 9 numbers) and format them as 99999-9999. Take the zip code out of the target string.
2. Search for the city using a list like this.  Once found, blank it out from the target string.
3. Now you are left with the street address on the left and the state on the right with several intervening blanks.

Of course there are problems:

1. What to do if the city is not found
2. Malformed strings
3. City and State have same name

But you may be able to code around them.

On the other hand, if this is a one-off and there are only a couple of hundred of them, do them manually.

Good Luck,

kylomas

edit: Try Google for several links for downloading city, state and county names

Edited December 15, 2014 by kylomas

[iamtheky]

#include <Array.au3>

$string = "123 Happy Lane New York City NY 100219809"

$aStr = stringsplit($string, " ")

$aStr[$aStr[0] - 2] = $aStr[$aStr[0] - 2] & ","

If stringlen($aStr[$aStr[0]]) = 9 Then
If StringInStr($aStr[$aStr[0]] , "-") = 0 Then $aStr[$aStr[0]] = stringleft($aStr[$aStr[0]] , 5) & "-" & stringright($aStr[$aStr[0]] , 4)
Endif

for $i = 1 to $aStr[0]

If $aStr[$i] = "Lane" Then $aStr[$i] = $aStr[$i] & ","

Next

$sFrmt = _ArrayToString ($aStr , " " , 1)

msgbox(0 , '' , $sFrmt)

 

 

Some will have set positions, but you will have to account for all the ways people write street names Court, Crt, Ct., etc... in the loop, as that will be the only way I can think of to discern where the address stops and city begins.  You can assume the zip will be last, the state second to last.

edit:  tried to wrap the 9 digit in an if statement and boned the formatting of the post...but at least its not all ugly on 5 digit zips now.

Edited December 15, 2014 by boththose

[mikell]

I suggest googling "parse us address"  to see the magnitude of the problem 

[kylomas]

Another link for U.S. cities and states...

This list makes it even easier...

Get city, state and zip...what's left is the street address.

The problem I see is if you have addresses like this:

123 E My ST

ATTN: Mail Room

C/O Me

West Allis, Wi

53214

which would look like "123 E My ST ATTN: Mail Room C/O ME West Allis Wi 53214" in your format 

Edited December 15, 2014 by kylomas

[Jewtus]

Ya I've been googling for a while trying to find the best way of doing this. It does look like the script that both came up with works pretty well (after I added some alterations)

[kylomas]

Delivery locations can be in so many different forms I don't see how that technique can work...but if it works for you, I'm out'a here

Edited December 15, 2014 by kylomas

[iamtheky]

I see ATTN: xxx  at the top of the address usually in place of the Name, not midstroke.  So adding OR $aStr[$i] = "ST"  doesnt make it the cleanest as you would probably like a delimiter between ME and the city, but it is no less legible than it was to begin with.  Edge Cases are indeed edgy.

[kylomas]

Agreed, that's why I opted for remove all known and what's left is the delivery location (123 My ST)...regardless, the OP seems satisfied with your solution

[iamtheky]

I started down your path, but then opted to half-ass it.  I also want to see the OPs alterations (or a badass regex), there are soooo many variances I would like to see the result of one that catches anything over 50% of them.

[kylomas]

Jewtus,

F.Y.I. Followup...There is an open source project called Open Street Map (OSM).  They have street names, by area, current to within hours...just google OSM...

kylomas

[Jewtus]

Jewtus,

F.Y.I. Followup...There is an open source project called Open Street Map (OSM).  They have street names, by area, current to within hours...just google OSM...

kylomas

I just took a look... This does look promising, but unfortunately, I can't run my data through any third party sources. Thanks though. 

[kylomas]

Yes, I understand.  The reason that I posted this was if you get to the point where you need to verify addresses or address formats you can download every address in the U.S. at this site.

[Jewtus]

Oh snap... I had not though about doing that... Thanks!!

Boss is out this week for the holidays and left me no work so maybe I'll work on a UDF for address transforming.