How do you perform address validation? [closed]

Answer 1

For us-based address data my company has used GeoStan. It has bindings for C and Java (and we created a Perl binding). Note that it is a commercial product and isn't cheap. It is quite fast though (~300 addresses per second) and offers features like CASS certification (USPS bulk mail discount), DPV (Delivery point verification) flagging, and LON/LAT geocoding.

There is a Perl module Geo::PostalAddress, but it uses heuristics and doesn't have the other features mentioned for GeoStan.

Edit: some have mentioned 'doing it yourself', if you do decide to do this, a good source of information to start with is the US Census Tiger Data Set, which contains a lot of information about the US including address information.

Answer 2

There are companies that provide this service. Service bureaus that deal with mass mailing will scrub an entire mailing list to that it's in the proper format, which results in a discount on postage. The USPS sells databases of address information that can be used to develop custom solutions. They also have lists of approved vendors who provide this kind of software and service.

There are some (but not many) packages that have APIs for hooking address validation into your software.

However, you're right that its a pretty nasty problem.

http://www.usps.com/ncsc/ziplookup/vendorslicensees.htm