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Feature Enhancement: Zip Codes


Captain Morgan

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In addition to states, I think it would be very useful if ZIP codes aka postal codes outside of the US/UK/Canada/Australia could be added to the system, so we can also make searches by ZIP codes. I know, they are much harder to find than state/region/county/province information, because they are usually in databases, not in simple listings. But I guess if we ask from postal organisations of each country, they may give us a simple list of numbers. I'll try that soon in Finland.

 

Here is a begining with the postal codes of Åland Islands, I hope that people from other countries can provide their ZIP/postal codes too.

 

22100 MARIEHAMN

22120 MARIEHAMN (Västra Jomala)

22130 GOTTBY

22140 MARIEHAMN (Östra Jomala)

22150 JOMALA

22160 MARIEHAMN (Järsö)

22220 EMKARBY

22240 HAMMARLAND

22270 ECKERÖ

22310 PÅLSBÖLE

22320 ÖDKARBY

22330 TJUDÖ

22340 GETA

22410 GODBY

22430 SALTVIK

22520 KASTELHOLM

22530 SUND

22550 VÅRDÖ

22610 LEMLAND

22630 LUMPARLAND

22710 FÖGLÖ

22720 SOTTUNGA

22730 KÖKAR

22810 SEGLINGE

22820 KUMLINGE

22830 ENKLINGE

22840 LAPPO

22910 TORSHOLMA

22920 BRÄNDÖ

22930 FISKÖ

22940 ÅVA

22950 JURMO

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Zipcode lists are pretty much useless without having any coordinate information attached to them. Or is it really so that people hiding caches in US, UK, Canada and Australia type in the code themselves when writing the cache description? :anibad:

 

Eurobilltracker service does have a database of European postal codes with coordinates. That is, when you enter a eurobill there, you can see it's location also on a map. To my understanding they keep on updating the zipcode list with new coordinates all the time. If they'd give that database for GC.com to use, there would be lots of work already done.

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But I guess if we ask from postal organisations of each country, they may give us a simple list of numbers. I'll try that soon in Finland.

I wish you luck. If I remember correctly there has been issues that Finland Post Corporation doesn't give permission to use their postal code listing.

On the other hand, I don't think that hard coded postal code listing is needed, postal code field in database is enough. Cachers then simply add this info to their cache data.

 

In the Finland there are approximately 3600 postal codes.

I feel that postal codes are bit abstract. I would like to see city or municipality name search implemented first. If I'm travelling I usally know the

name of the place, but not postal code.

 

because they are doing that as a hobby, not for business.

We do have a new feature list about a mile long, and prioritize changes as a result of this forum and the community demands.

I think that geocaching.com should be developed as open source.

Since it seems that despite the business or cause of that, there are no enough resources to implement new features. By they way it would be nice to see geocaching.com project roadmap.

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In the Finland there are approximately 3600  postal codes.

I feel that postal codes are bit abstract. I would like to see city or municipality name search implemented first. If I'm travelling I usally know the name of the place, but not postal code.

I feel the same about this matter. Alone in Tampere (the city I live in) there are tens of different postal codes. It would be quite absurd to do a cache finding query with 33230, since the result would be about the same as with 33240 (if the query included the nearest caches also in nearby postal areas).

 

If there was a Finnish postal code search implemented in GC.com, it'd probably be most practical to use just the 'main' codes, ending with 100. Like 33100 for Tampere, 28100 for Pori, 45100 for Kouvola etc. Well, maybe the capital area would benefit for more accurate codes too. :(

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This is also a request from Sweden.

 

We have plans of doing an non-GC.com database with all zipcodes. The plan is to let users add new zipcodes with a coordinate somewhere within the zipcode.

Next time someone seeks for all nearby caches, and enters the zipcode, will it retrieve the coordinates from the database and redirect the user to GC.com with the given coordinates.

 

It would be better if GC.com had the option to seek for caches in Sweden with the help of zipcode. There are almost 3000 caches in Sweden, and a lot of new users and interested people that wants to know if there is any caches nearby. But since it is difficult to find any caches nearby (the typical search string is either coordinates or zipcode). And I think the most people do know their zipcode better than coordinates - at least in the beginning :(

 

We can of course provide GC.com with coordinates for all the Swedish zipcodes (five digits) if necessary.

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We can of course provide GC.com with coordinates for all the Swedish zipcodes (five digits) if necessary.

Is this one coordinate per ZIP code (easy) or is it a ZIP-code definition for every coordinate in Sweden? I doubt that the latter would be (precisely) possible for Austria, as the ZIP code areas are polygons with a lot of vertici (corners?).

 

I feel that postal codes are bit abstract. [...] If I'm travelling I usally know the

name of the place, but not postal code.

Just my words.

 

BS/2

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The U.S. lookup is one coordinate per zip code. Other threads here complain that it's sometimes a bit off from the "center" of the zip. I figure as long as it's within a mile it's good enough. How many people live right at their zip code's center anyways? :(

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(bump)

 

Jeremy, we have a full list of all the zip codes in Sweden together with coordinates for each one. Are geocaching.com interested in these, so the Sweds (and others) can use it on the website?

I would be Interested to add this to the GSAK database. If I could get my hands on it that would be great.

 

Thanks

Clyde

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