ratio'd

Autofill

preach

The US Postal service has some of the most complex software in existence, including some of the most advanced handwriting recognition ever developed.

The fact that mail gets to its destination when it does, as soon as it does, with overall minimal error, is nothing short of amazing.

But some web dev blogger has it All. Figured. Out.

Right.

I'm sure your way is better.

This is big "I could code it in a weekend" HN energy.

The USPS owes you a debt of gratitude for buying a snarky domain and bringing this to their attention after 63 years.

I completely agree with the premise, but if we just ask for the ZIP code first and auto-fill the rest, how am I going to justify my 2-week sprint to build a custom, React-based, fuzzy-searchable, virtualized dropdown component for the 'State' field?

Just kidding xP

As others have pointed out this is just US-centric, and doesn't work for most countries. The best option I can see is to have an autocomplete, and allow manual addresses with a country-specific form based on a country selection (or detection).

In the Netherlands most websites use a common routing database to map a combination of a ZIP code and house number (+ suffix) to your exact address automatically. Great UX! And naturally depends on good administrative and postal services data quality.

Zip codes do not have a one to one relationship to cities in the US. It's a common misconception. It's true about 90% of the time, but there are a lot of outliers. I used to work with GIS data and there are a ton of exceptions.

In Japanese websites this is pretty much the norm. Govt, bank, marketplace, you name it. fills the address until the block, where you'll need to fill the rest of the numbers until your house address / room number

I know some zips covers multiple cities. I would imagine some cross state lines in places too. Doesn’t cover multiple countries either as some have similar formats (5 digits). So there are edge cases that make this infeasible

Agreed, but:

JRandomCustomer enters street-number, apt-number, city, state, code ... in that order.

Also, many websites seem to have a negotiation with the browser, where, given: a street address, -> they can populate the other fields.

Definitely not perfect

The visit Japan website for faster customs clearing does that. Zip first with auto fill. Very nice: https://www.vjw.digital.go.jp

The kind of takes that promote the stereotypes of self-centered americans.

You know this is how we do it in the uk. Put in the post code then select the address. Post codes here are also really specific so usually it’s a few dozen addresses to pick from.

We tried this on one of our e-commerce sites and it mostly worked. But we had to scrap it once we started expanding internationally.

On a personal note, please just let my browser autofill my address.

“A postal code will belong to a single city” applies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907301

All the extra steps serve as some type of verification + data collection.

The devs know how to make the experience better, but they get paid to implement some mbas mining scheme.

The future is ok but mostly sucks.

Why do we not use ZIP+4 add-on codes anymore? Some sites won't even accept them. If you put that in first, you've narrowed it down to one street at worst, in most cases.

I tried to put my postal code and it wrongly assumed that I live in the United States.

The zip first suggestion seems that would be really inconvenient for around 95.8% of the world population.

there should be one text box with multiple lines and you enter your address the way you would write it on an envelope. works internationally, gets stuff delivered. If the postal service can parse it, so can a website. Typing in your address will go so much faster than having to read the tags and navigate for every piece they are asking for. any redundancy can be used for error checking which is a good idea.

the "fields", like the goggles, they do nothing

My zip covers two cities, each has a similar street name; 5-digits isn't enough.

I've encountered websites that take the zip and won't let me change the wrongly-assumed city

The Dutch zipcode and the house number are unique. So, to mail something to the Netherlands anywhere from the world, it is enough to write something like: NL 1072CT 4.

Someone needs to write "Falsehoods programmers believe about zip codes" hahahaha ;)

PD: if you don't get the reference, a classic: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...

This works really well in Ireland. Eircodes (our late adoption postal codes) resolve to individual addresses rather than areas, so Irish sites mostly do this.

The majority of comments complains about non-USA. But the author clearly states:

> Fine, maybe country first

It's an example - limit typing. But adjust it to your own use case.

While using imperial system and MM/DD/YY for dates, I doubt zip codes will follow a digital-frendly and world-aligned format.

ZIP codes don't uniquely identify cities / towns. (Or, in fact, States). Not to mention, they certainly don't work globally...

Keep going! The idea has merit. But it is US centric.

I tried the example with my local post code and of course it didn’t work as I’m not in the US.

> I type 90210. You now know I'm in Beverly Hills, California, United States

You CAN’T get the country from a zip code. France also use 5 digits zip code for example. You must ask for the country before asking for the zip code, even if you pre fill it with a sane default, like the main country you operate in.

A little too US centric. With a bit more effort it would detect all of the G20's post code formats and fill in the country name automatically. (Sparing me the frustration of trying to choose between Switzerland and Swaziland in the 6 point font you chose for the pop-up.)

Also, don't be a dick. Have some empathy for your reader. Half of the UI designers you are talking to don't have a choice in how it works. Their colleagues chose some stupid framework which they can't customize. The other half didn't even want to do this task, they just got it assigned to them by some PM they don't respect (who, in turn, does not respect any advice coming from UI designers), and they are doing the minimum they possibly can while applying to other jobs that suck less.

IMO, the spirit of the idea is to put higher information density fields first, and let that smooth out the UX for the remaining fields as you go downwards. Yes, there will be exceptions but that only matters if you’re trying to absolve the user of all work for 100% of situations. Trying to do that is a fools errand. Invert the order and use the information gathered to make inputting the rest simpler for 80% of the users. Then make it easy for the other 20% to course correct (ex: don’t disable autofilled fields, highlight all text when tabbing to the next field, etc). I think this pattern is a good one to keep in mind, but not blindly follow, when designing the UX of a UI.

It should be at least "Put country first, then ask for zip code".

08036 Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

08036 Hainesport, New Jersey, USA

It does make some sense to go from most general (country) to more specific (address) instead of the opposite, so the form can implement better auto completions.

However in practice postal addresses are not that clean so simple dumb forms are usually better, because it's easy for exceptions to be missed by auto completion algorithms. I would be very pissed if I had to type the zip code above and then correct the wrong guess on every website.

Either you are helpful and guess correctly or you don't guess at all.

Le sigh. It has now a disclaimer at the top. “Hello from across the pond (or whichever body of water separates us). This is a US ZIP code website. We are aware that other countries exist.”

This guy just keeps digging himself into a hole of ignorance - is he aware of Mexico? Canada?

      const msgs = [
        `Yes, we know ${country} exists. We're very proud of you.<br><br>This site is about US address forms — the ones that make <em>Americans</em> scroll past Turkmenistan 200 times a year. You have your own postal code problems. We believe in you.`,
        `We see you're visiting from ${country}. Welcome. We regret to inform you that this rant is specifically about American address forms, which are — and we cannot stress this enough — <em>unbelievably bad</em>.<br><br>Your country probably has its own postal code horrors. We'd love to hear about them: <a href='mailto:shame@zipcodefirst.com'>shame@zipcodefirst.com</a>`,
        `Hello from across the pond (or whichever body of water separates us from ${country}). This is a US ZIP code website. We are aware that other countries exist. We just have 160 million addresses and a 50-state dropdown to be mad about first.<br><br>Your frustrations are valid. Your postal codes are also useful. Put them first too.`
      ];

This sound like it's more efficient - however... (and ignoring the US specific stuff)

Even in forms where I've designed this it breaks my flow as a user. I'm used to suburb state postcode order (I'm an Aussie). It's how we were taught to write the address in school. It's been a pattern for a long time, and the reversal of the fields slows my brain down.

IMHO The better user experience isn't changing the order of the fields. It's honouring auto-complete so the user doesn't have to enter this data in the first place.

In the last couple of years in the uk, address forms ask for you street address and the rest will autocomplete from there - city, postcode. Makes things a lot easier in the way the author suggests

Besides the technical constraints (the zip code can't always tell you the city, etc), the zip code is more of a checksum to make sure the address you typed makes sense. I think you could probably get around the imperfections by making the city / state / zip be things suggested to you, whether in an autocomplete or by making them first in a dropdown. The imperfection of a zip code in encoding a city name doesn't mean that the frustration of filling out addresses isn't a real one!

As pointed out by many comments, the post seems US-centric and using zip code doesn't work for all countries.

But just for reference, in Singapore, we use 6-digit zip codes, each of which can uniquely locate a single building, so yes, a lot of local websites essentially just expect a zip code plus unit number, without the hassle of typing out the address at all.

Maybe what I wanted to say is, the idea is cool and _can_ work to enhance user experience with proper localization.

> If you're asking for a ZIP code, use `inputmode="numeric"`

I'm not in the UK and even I know their postal codes have letters in them, cmon mate...

Address entries are the weirdest places of frustration. Business clients want Google Places to make address input easier. This user wants a single ZIP code entry to begin the process. Why is adding one’s own address manually that huge of a hurdle that we have to separate the user from the inputs? If there is one person in the world who should know my address, it’s me: why then put such an effort into building a site that takes away my ability to enter my address?

did an llm write this? how is it so confidently ignoring rest of the planet?

despite the obvious flaws others have already noted, plenty of countries include letters in their zipcodes, rendering the "Invoke the right keyboard" argument not only incorrect but potentially damaging to users or businesses who choose to follow this. if the website won't allow me to physically enter my zipcode, i'll just take my business elsewhere.

Unfortunately you still need country first. But past that, the point stands well. You'll need to adjust the form based on the country, obviously.

For the US you can use zip-5 to prefill bunch of data and zip+4 practically fills it all out for a lot of addresses.

Each country has some particular nuance though, so it's only as simple as "zip first" or "postcode first" in some locations.

This failed when I put in an australian postal code.

Most sites I use auto-fill city, state and zip once I type the street address, which is the 1 piece of my address that can’t be guessed from any of the others. So I’d say that’s probably the optimal path for most people, at least in the US. I’m sure people from other countries scoff at the US address suggestion and go straight for the country box from the beginning.

In a similar tone, it’s 2026. Why are we still messing with form ordering instead of leaning into autofill? So somehow it makes more sense to change every single address form in existence to a non standard order because…why exactly? There’s a whole world outside of the United States with many formats for postal codes. It’s more efficient to just use autofill…

While interesting, it would take me more time to implement and validate this logic than it would take the user to enter the data.

WooCommerce implementation I wrote a few years ago, US, Ireland, Japan, India:

https://github.com/BrianHenryIE/bh-wc-postcode-address-autof...

Why don't we learn and use our (short) plus code?

That would have all the desired properties and then some, and would work everywhere on Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code

My postal code is 2200 (København N), and that form didn't do anything for me.

All zip codes are postal codes, but not all postal codes are zip codes.

At my last gig, this sentence was said a lot, and people kept confusing the two, both in code and in daily speech, so maybe colloquially they are the same :)

Awesome idea, IF you are US only and don't cover edge cases and (want to depend on an external API or want to have some sort of eventually outdated map of city <> postcode).

It is possible to do this properly, e. G., DHL and UPS do a somewhat okay job of it but isn't easy.

Some zip codes cover multiple cities.

It's generally easier to start typing your street address (maybe 4-5 characters), see an auto fill, click your address and all information, including the zip is already filled out.

If you started with just the zip you still have to type your street address afterwards.

I would say this doesn't actually work well for UX, because people are more likely to know their street address and city than their zip code. Personally, every time I've moved over the years, it took a few weeks for me to internalize my new zip code.

Go with 20252 when you know they're just collecting it to send junk mail. Many programmers don't even try to filter for it.

I guess a better proposal would be:

- Put the country first

- Put the zip code second

I wish I could downvote this. Please don’t do this folks. Editing “guessed” filled inputs when they’re incorrect is a higher UX bar of effort than browser autofill or even just typing it (especially on mobile). Plus a non-zero number of users will just not correct or be confused and abandon.

I only ask for zip on our checkout. And get the email from one tap methods.

Like the author I cannot stand how stupid some checkout processes are!

It doesn't take long to type your address. Plus password managers or keyboards often auto fill it. It's not that deep.

> You didn't need me to scroll past Turkmenistan.

You’d absolutely have to determine that you’re in the US before asking for zip code.

I wonder if people had a similarly negative reaction when someone first proposed speculative execution in processor pipelines.

“This is is a terrible idea, you’re telling me you will make 99% of cases way faster but completely ignore the 1% that will be slightly slower? Unbelievable.”

If you have SA that most of your customers are in USA, this is a good idea. If not, maybe use your brain a bit and figure out if it can be adapted to something which will work for your customer base.

Related, on the country drop-down front: please put the United States (or whatever your customers' main country is) at the top. You can probably tell I want the US from a combination of, you know, 99% of your sales being to the US and my language being set to English. And, sure, put Canada and even the UK next to it. Go wild, have the top ten English-speaking countries there if you like! It makes things so much easier.

The trick, then, is that you don't remove anything from the alphabetical list. With modern computer technology, we can have two places to find something! So if I miss your fancy shortcut, or it's not applicable to me, everything will still be in the regular old familiar place. It just works.

Use ZIP Code: the last word in mail address.

Just make sure it works well with autocomplete. No additional fanciness or weird rearranging of fields is needed.

> If you're asking for a ZIP code, use inputmode="numeric"

Does this work for zips? Some zips have a leading 0.

Autofill seems like a better solution.

At least detect my country by IP range and put "US" at the top of the country dropdown.

Ehh... US-centric. Better to use significance order: Country, then postal (most countries have postal), then region, city, and street address. Best, however, is to _not_ separate the address into fields. Instead, allow a free text field for the person doing data entry to put in the address in _their_ format and then parse it on the backend. This gets you the most flexibility and allows you to encounter and handle corner cases by using (my favorite test data) public addresses from all over the world. _I_ routinely test my address entry by Googling McDonald's locations and feeding them into my system. Handle an inscrutable address like any other bad data and say, politely, that your system does not understand the data.

All that said, free-form entry is a hard sell. My _customers_ expect field data entry, so I implement field data entry. I just re-order my checks to be more forgiving until the data entry is complete.

I was implementing a customer service address entry using significance order 25 years ago. As I already _knew_ that I had a US-centric customer base (we sold long distance to sorority and fraternity members), entering US ZIP first saved a lot of time and more highly leveraged the US postal address cleaner that we had already purchased for our mass marketing mailers. The people working the call center _loved_ it, as they could focus more on their call turn-over than on data entry.

Somehow a lot of Japanese websites use this trick. Far more often than USian websites.

How about you put the address line first, and I press the TAB key to autofill.

The ignorance of this post to the rest of the world is amazing.

The hubris of buying a domain to loudly demonstrate that you don't understand the complexities of a topic. And then you don't even put your name on it...

Anyways, further reading:

https://aldavigdis.dev/2023/03/25/falsehoods-programmers-bel...

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood?tab=readme-ov...

Galaxy brain: address should just be a multi-line field

Likewise, we should all use ISO 8601 date format.

Phew! Somebody had to say it. Finally thank you

Um a lot of US zip codes map to multiple cities. Some even to multiple states. If you build a picker for city/state this works fine but your premise is easily refuted if you look at the data!

Zip codes map to postal routes, not polygons

How about autofilling zip code

"See how you typed 5 numbers and three fields filled themselves in?"

Nope! Didn't see that. Seems the zip code registry doesn't have a number of German zip codes.

If you’re going to ask for a country, ask for it first.

Zip codes repeat across countries, you know.

>Make that 1003+ times. At least in my part of the US, even a pretty modest-size city will have multiple zip codes.

Is that an issue? Who cares that new york city has 20+ zip codes? Just fill autofill "new york city, new york".

>for example, some zip's are just for Post Office Boxes.

Again, is it bad except for some joker who wants something sent to an invalid address?

The digits aren’t random though, some of them have meaning.

No... That was addressed elsewhere. That's the bigger problem

Boats can have zip codes too. Well one boat. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/on-the-water-with-amer...

Yeah, I’m thinking about how the address validation databases would for years correct my house’s address to point to a house in a cul-de-sac a block away. I could tell who was auto-correcting my address by which parcels arrived there. The USPS carrier knew too and he would ignore the address on some parcels.

I eventually had to dig through a bunch of USPS documentation for their Address Element Correction database to find their helpdesk. Apparently places like Fedex use that database.

So I agree as well, and I would be pretty angry if someone forced me to pick from a list instead of just trusting that I know my own address.

Also as another aside I was a shipping clerk for a while and occasionally came across an address like “across from such-and such store halfway down the alley.” So the author is making a pretty bold assumption that there is such a thing as a standard address that can be auto-filled.

If that's a self-own then fair enough.

But if you get mail to an address with a ZIP code listed to another city then surely you're aware of this as it comes up constantly for anyone who ever receives mail or packages.

Hah. Post codes are just weird and non standard. I've had times travelling where the point of sale asks me for a zip code after using my non-US card.

I learned from a cashier to type 00000 and it has always worked.

Or some strange concept of state. Well there is some upper divisions, but postal service does absolutely nothing with them and they are never part of any address.

I went year-make-model many years ago when I did an autoglass website.

The filtering value is big as you said, and the model year as a first filter is easy to type in, and probably gets you reasonably close if you're off-by-one. Accidentally picking an '05 Sonata instead of an '04 probably has similar parts, but if you pick Honda instead of Hyundai, you're way off in Wonderland.

Unfortunately these USPS datasets are not public because USPS sells them. Or in some cases, the pattern tends to be that USPS has a contract with a provider (part of what I call the Postal Industrial Complex) that maintains the database and then sells it to both USPS and everyone else. Since these databases are used primarily by bulk mail services, they're fairly expensive and represent an important revenue source to USPS. Remember that USPS is semi-privatized, so they're looking for fees they can charge like everyone else... especially fees that can be changed more easily than postage rates.

That said, the ZIP DB is indeed not very large, so you can find copies of it. You won't generally find complete copies of the City State file but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one out there.

That's not nearly as good as Canada's H0H 0H0.

My dad had an address in Morgantown, Indiana, and the fact that he lived several miles south, over the county line and past antother small town, always made it pretty clear to me that he didn't live in Morgantown.

Likewise, if you live in another state, there's little confusion because state lines appear on maps and are well marked on all major roads.

Businesses and individuals are responsible for knowing which state they reside in and paying the appropriate taxes, regardless of where their mail is sorted.

As for elections, electoral districts don't generally align with city limits in the first place, so this has to be sorted out by the election registration system based on the full address in most cases anyway.

As for what city name appears in legal documents, the answer is that "preferred" doesn't mean "mandatory". A warrant to search the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 4790 W 16th St, Speedway IN, 46222, would be perfectly valid, despite the fact that the USPS prefers mail to be addressed to "Indianapolis" rather than "Speedway". For there to be any possibility of confusion, you'd need to have two distinct locations, whose identical addresses share a ZIP code, and differ only by city name, which for obvious reasons the postal service will not allow.

First, you're responsible for knowing where you live. Historically, people who lived in more challenging areas geographically often did not have regular postal addresses at all. You would just have a box number in the nearest town or a rural route stop number, and these obviously didn't reflect the legalities of where you lived. In our modern world, USPS has adopted a policy of 100% physical addressing, meaning that all properties now have a "real" address even if the number part is scaled from mileposts (as is the case in rural areas). Still, I think people who live in areas where any of this is less than obvious understand the nuance that how USPS handles addresses is not necessarily the same as how the voter registration clerk handles them.

Still, it is rarely a problem in practice, because anyone relying on addresses to establish these legal details will have to look at where the address is actually located---not just the city written in it. Keep in mind that quite a few people live in ZIPs where they could write multiple city names in their address.

When it comes to the unusual case of spanning states, it might help to note that the City State Database the postal service uses to validate addresses does not actually differentiate between city and state. "NEW YORK NY" is a single string. The state is really just part of the city name. The fact that USPS implemented it this way indicates the extent to which it does not matter in operational reality.

A sibling comment points this out, but it might also help to explain that in the US, it is very common for people to have mailing addresses in cities they do not actually live in. That's because of suburbs. City lines are often surprisingly arbitrary and reflect complex political histories. Many people consider themselves to live in [major city] but, in legal actuality, live in [unincorporated county that contains major city]. Many of the upsides of living in the city, sans some of the property taxes and voting in city elections! Yet another reason that people understand that mailing addresses are not definitive reflections of political boundaries.

If you ever work as an election clerk you will find this a LOT---people indignant that they cannot vote for the mayor, to whom you will have to explain, somehow for the first time, that they do not actually live in city limits. This tends to be more obvious if you get a property tax bill but a lot of people are renters and never really think about that aspect.

Head of data science at a corporation here. People pasting into Excel has been a bane of my job for over a decade.

It sounds like your address isn't listed correctly in the UK Postcode Address File (PAF).[0] There's a form you can fill in requesting a correction.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcode_Address_File [1] https://www.royalmail.com/personal/receiving-mail/update-you...

Yeah, there are plenty of annoying edge cases.

For instance, my postcode covers 15 houses and half of a large park. Those houses have been subdivided into 4-6 flats, and many have been redivided or renumbered multiple times. The park also contains various buildings and other places that might plausibly receive deliveries, some of which have multiple entries (an electricity substation appears 8 times, for some reason). So in total, it covers more than 200 addresses - mine is no.140-ish in a typical sorted list.

You'd be amazed by how many address checkers can't handle more than 64, 100, or 128 addresses in a postcode. Or how many scrollbars stop working, requiring you to use the arrow keys to navigate. Or how many other glitches I've seen.

The other common problems are usually down to temporary postcodes (which used to always end with an 'X' but can now be indistinguishable from 'real' codes) escaping into the wild, re-addressings and re-numberings not being picked up properly, the old problem of outdated PAFs being used, and - my personal favourite - BT/Openreach using their own separate postcode database, dating from the Post Office split in the early 1980s, which doesn't always agree with the PAF. Agh!

Somebody else mentioned the PAF. I should further clarify why your address might (might, this could just be a mistake) not be on there and why therefore almost any form should have an option to "do it the hard way"

The PAF is about what the Royal Mail calls "Delivery Points" which are places they promise to deliver physical letters to. Inside my building for example every home has a front door, with a letter box, and letters literally get posted into my flat, but down the street there's a building with a rack of boxes set into the wall and post is delivered to your numbered box, and up the street there's a townhouse converted and all the mail just goes in one piles for everybody in that building.

Many delivery points share a postcode, but because they know them all they actually all have unique numbers, and unlike a postcode they're not for humans so they get changed quite frequently as new buildings are constructed or working patterns change, if you examine your post carefully (in the UK†) there are two rows of fluorescent orange dots on the outside, these were printed by mail sorting machines shortly after the mail was received, one is an entirely arbitrary serial number and it designates that piece of mail for a very short period (say a few days) to enable statistical tracking for performance - if #213940202 entered the system in Glasgow on Monday, was in Portsmouth by Tuesday but wasn't delivered to someone's door until Friday the problem ain't in Glasgow. But the other one we're interested in here is the Delivery Point as a numeric code. If you don't have multiple addresses this row of orange dots will be identical on every item you've received for some time yet it's different on someone else's mail.

† This trick was invented in Britain but is used (licensed) in some other countries because it's a good idea, however exactly what is encoded and so what it "means" may vary.

I had a similar problem. The way it was explained to me was that in practice, there are two databases used in the UK for this commercially and they don’t always agree. I used to live in a bungalow next to a large house that had been converted into flats. In one database it was listed with the bungalow name then the street name, and in the other database it was listed as “Flat 8” using the other building’s street address. About half of British delivery forms used one place, about half used the other.

Because most websites won't have two separate fields for "ZIP code" and "postal code". Even if they knew that ZIP Code is a trademark (I didn't until you mentioned it), they would (wisely) know that putting in two fields would just confuse most people. So they put in one field. Many sites label it as "ZIP code / postal code", but some just label it as "ZIP code". But the intent is clear: put in the multi-digit string that identifies your address, whether your country calls it a ZIP code or a postal code.

Put a postal code first.

Include a field for the country that is autofilled via Geolocation API or geoip if that's unavailable.

I'm definitely not, but the lazy method is just to cache the data your customers provide, or curate some data for the countries you are most interested in.

That gets around countries that consider their postal code database a licensed dataset.

That assumes the existence of a reliable, free postcode API of all addresses on the planet.

I did a very brief search, and none of the commercial offerings I could test recognised the postcode of the Eastern European neighbourhood I was born in. Also, like half of African countries don't have postcodes. It's just not a good system.

Only if you're limiting yourself tok those two countries. A lot of countries use the entirety of a 4 or 5 digit range for their codes. Any given 5 digit number is likely a valid ZIP code in at least half dozen countries.

The form stopped accepting input at five characters. I could not enter a "zip code" for my country even if I wanted to.

Even if they fixed that, there are other issues. (You pretty much need to cross-reference it with a database, which assumes said database even exists.)

France also uses 5-digits zip codes, and many other countries too I'd wager.

I would just like to point out that the city field doesn’t necessarily prove anything because many unincorporated areas have a listed a city but may not be subject to the laws or taxes of a municipality. So having the correct city isn’t as useful as one thinks it is.

This is accurate. For a scenario with a possibility of litigation you must ultimately geocode the address with google maps API or census geocoder, point in polygon against district boundaries (geopandas or shapely), then pass the result through a rules table keyed on jurisdiction + case type.

It’s more that the municipal “geofence” encompasses a certain area, and all addresses that fall within that space belong to that municipality. I.e. the address doesn’t determine the location, it just happens to be located somewhere.

These things shouldn’t be based on the zip code.

IP geolocation is increasingly not useful for anything, especially for mobile users. The best it can do is give you the correct country and maybe get you in the right region.

What if I order something on the road and want it delivered to my home? Or what if I want to order something over mobile? My mobile IP is often 1500km away from where I live.

Autofill solves all of that with an implementation cost that approaches zero.

The author seems to have either misunderstood the API they're referencing or are assuming US only addresses. The specific endpoint they're calling seems to be for US specific zip codes.

The point stands that this doesn't "just work" for global services.

"Obviously" the article is wrong, as pointed out by the grandparent of your comment (and several others in the comments). I won't violate the site guidelines by suggesting you didn't read it.

I'd like any person or system asking for my information one field at a time to minimize my time and effort to give it to them.

Yeah it should auto fill but not stop you from changing it, best experience 98% of the time.

I just looked it up and apparently there's some cases of zip codes that do go across state lines too, but it's rare.

Street name isn’t auto completed here…

Meanwhile, here in Bristol, a whole bunch of sites insist on using a drop down for the county and list "Avon" which doesn't even exist. It should be Bristol or possibly City of Bristol.

> Our IP address location should not perfectly pinpoint anyone, unless that IP address is a data center of some sort.

By perfectly, I meant it got my city and zip correct, but I looked up the lat/lng and its a 5 min drive away. So pretty dang close!

Not sure how you got it that close if its only supposed to point to the nearest data center.

I get the vibe that it's more like there's unexpected complexity and it's difficult to be confident you know how zipcodes work with enough detail to make the feature work. And that is just one example of possible complexity.

Do zipcodes change for example? Can your drop-down quickly go out-of-date? You'd need a way to manually enter a city so people are able to tell the system an address. Do you want to bother making an auto-updating zipcode feature just for a form?

Is it going to confuse people because nobody else has bothered to make this superfancy selection feature thing?

Is this USA only? There are postal codes/zipcode-equivalents in other countries.

It starts to feel it's likely not worth the time and effort to try to be smart about this particular feature. At least not if I'm imagining this us some generic, universal address web form that is supposed to be usable for USA-sized areas.

To me it feels similar to that famous article about what you can and cannot assume about people's names; turns out they can be way more complicated and weird than one might assume.

Although maybe zipcodes don't really go that deep in complexity. But on the spot I would not dare to assume they are.

I just placed a delivery order from home depot and this is exactly how they handled it. I put in my zip, they gave me a drop down of the cities that zip covers (there are like 5 of them, incredibly) and I was on my way.

Indeed. I don't always even do the drop down just make it autofill a still editable text box

Even if a zip code contains multiple cities, each ZIP has one "preferred" locality name and you can default to that. Any of the locality names within a zip code is deliverable for all addresses in that zip code.

As long it does become a dropdown, fine.

But in TFA's example it does not (my zip has 3 possible city names; TFA's example shows only 1).

Except that's not what this page does, so it's harder than TFA makes it out to be. I am in a zip code that spans two cities, and it won't let me change the city name at all once I put my zip code in.

You also suggested I hadn’t read it. “I won't violate the site guidelines by suggesting you didn't read it”. Only you did (saying you won’t say something and then saying it doesn’t really absolve you).

I find you rude so I won’t reply to you anymore.

Many other comments here have outlined the problems with what TFA appears to consider "sane defaults".

But sure, if you can do it right (e.g. "Put the country first"), then by all means do so!

Nobody knows their +4 code. You cannot ask for information 90%+ of people won't have.

A ZIP+4 does not encode all information.

Proof: a post office has its own zip code, for PO Boxes.

The +4 is the last four digits of the post office box.

If the Post Office has more than 10,000 boxes, the +4 will be duplicated.

ZIP+4? I think that's literally enough digits to give every house in the US (about 150,000,000 apparently) its own identifier.

Wrong. There can also be multiple cities in the same ZIP code. There is not a 1:1 relationship with a 5-digit ZIP as everyone is assuming here.

I'm not suggesting that one would design for the 10%, but I also think that writing off 10% - "nobody" - (particularly of a large number of people) is pretty dumb too.

> "10% can feel kind a big number when 100% is huge" is a funny argument

That would be a funny argument if it were the one being made.

The census bureau (very) periodically publishes zip code data (which is where some places get their geolocation info). If you work with enough addresses you’ll find some zip+4s that are wildly far away from where they used to be. There are paid services that have better accuracy, but I’m not sure how they acquire their data.

> I have a 4 digit postcode, I have to look it up every time I have to fill in an address form for delivery.

> A code sounds foolproof, until you realise most people don't engage with them for most of their lives - you don't tell the uber driver the zip/post code you are waiting in, and travelling to, nobody does.

When the above comments said +4, they meant knowing the second half of the nine digit zip code.

Basically everyone in the US knows the first 5 digits. It's really easy to memorize them. If you can remember your city, you can remember your zip code. And in the US you use it all the time, so it stays memorized.

> edit: just to add - Magic numbers are bad. Software engineers know that a number that's undocumented in code is unmaintainable, a zip code is worse.

That complaint about magic numbers is completely off base. Magic strings are just as bad in software. "Beverly Hills" and 90210 are equal sins on the magic front.

Your zip plus 4 changes. It isn't worth trying to know as it isn't supposed to be constlnt. If you send a lot of mail there is a discount for using it but you have to update everyone's address often (iirt at least 4x per year)

Heh, you should take a minute to look the answer up -

ZIP Codes 10701, 10702 (post office), 10703–10705, 10707 (shared with Tuckahoe, NY), 10708 (shared with Bronxville, NY), 10710, 10583 (shared with Scarsdale, NY)

Improved how?

I picked up the implication that you thought my response could be improved, so I tried to guess what your criticism was and respond to that. If it feels "way off" because I framed it as disagreement, then I dunno, that feels like the right framing? Unless it's something else I did? I could have made it clearer I was guessing but that doesn't seem way off.