topic post code truncated for street address in ArcGIS Location Service Questions

post code truncated for street address

msuk1 — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 23:00:15 GMT

Hi team,

when I use the suggest api, the post code is often truncated for the street address vs a point address, eg:

point address:
query: 10 downing street
responses:
- 10 Downing Street, Saint. James's, Westminster, London, England, SW1A 2AU, GBR
- 10 Downing Street, Saint. James's, Westminster, London, England, SW1A 2AB, GBR

street address:
query: downing street
responses:
- Downing Street, Saint. James's, Westminster, London, England, SW1A 2AA, GBR
- Downing Street, Saint. James's, Westminster, London, England, SW1A 2, GBR

There are 4 post codes, but only 3 are valid, I'm not sure why 'SW1A 2' is returned.
How can I fix this? The truncation occurs in many cases when I've tried searching for a street name.

Also it seems that the correct post code for 10 downing street is SW1A 2AA, but I guess that's a data quality issue which will hopefully eventually be solved.

Thanks.

Re: post code truncated for street address

BradNiemand — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:08:42 GMT

Street addresses in Great Britain can have multiple postal codes associated with them, and the first two to four characters of the postcode represent the outcode (or outward code) of a post code. The outcode contains the postcode area and the postcode district. The remaining characters in a postcode represent the incode (or inward code) of a post code.

When the input is a street name, Esri provides a truncated candidate with the characters common to all post codes on that street segment. Esri does this when there are multiple postal codes associated with a street segment. The truncated entry applies to all potential post codes used by that street segment.

We appreciate the feedback on the post code for the prime minister’s residence.

Brad

Re: post code truncated for street address

msuk1 — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 16:22:24 GMT

Thanks for sharing Brad. It will be useful for that to be documented here:
https://developers.arcgis.com/rest/geocode/api-reference/geocoding-find-address-candidates.htm
Though the above query was for the suggest API.
Will note, that the suggest API can return the common postcode (SW1A 2) and a specific postcode (SW1A 2AA) in the results of the same query.
Yes correct, I used the prime minister's residence as an example 🙂