Parse usable Street Address, City, State, Zip from a string [closed]

Answer 1

After the advice here, I have devised the following function in VB which creates passable, although not always perfect (if a company name and a suite line are given, it combines the suite and city) usable data. Please feel free to comment/refactor/yell at me for breaking one of my own rules, etc.:

Public Function parseAddress(ByVal input As String) As Collection
    input = input.Replace(",", "")
    input = input.Replace("  ", " ")
    Dim splitString() As String = Split(input)
    Dim streetMarker() As String = New String() {"street", "st", "st.", "avenue", "ave", "ave.", "blvd", "blvd.", "highway", "hwy", "hwy.", "box", "road", "rd", "rd.", "lane", "ln", "ln.", "circle", "circ", "circ.", "court", "ct", "ct."}
    Dim address1 As String
    Dim address2 As String = ""
    Dim city As String
    Dim state As String
    Dim zip As String
    Dim streetMarkerIndex As Integer

    zip = splitString(splitString.Length - 1).ToString()
    state = splitString(splitString.Length - 2).ToString()
    streetMarkerIndex = getLastIndexOf(splitString, streetMarker) + 1
    Dim sb As New StringBuilder

    For counter As Integer = streetMarkerIndex To splitString.Length - 3
        sb.Append(splitString(counter) + " ")
    Next counter
    city = RTrim(sb.ToString())
    Dim addressIndex As Integer = 0

    For counter As Integer = 0 To streetMarkerIndex
        If IsNumeric(splitString(counter)) _
            Or splitString(counter).ToString.ToLower = "po" _
            Or splitString(counter).ToString().ToLower().Replace(".", "") = "po" Then
                addressIndex = counter
            Exit For
        End If
    Next counter

    sb = New StringBuilder
    For counter As Integer = addressIndex To streetMarkerIndex - 1
        sb.Append(splitString(counter) + " ")
    Next counter

    address1 = RTrim(sb.ToString())

    sb = New StringBuilder

    If addressIndex = 0 Then
        If splitString(splitString.Length - 2).ToString() <> splitString(streetMarkerIndex + 1) Then
            For counter As Integer = streetMarkerIndex To splitString.Length - 2
                sb.Append(splitString(counter) + " ")
            Next counter
        End If
    Else
        For counter As Integer = 0 To addressIndex - 1
            sb.Append(splitString(counter) + " ")
        Next counter
    End If
    address2 = RTrim(sb.ToString())

    Dim output As New Collection
    output.Add(address1, "Address1")
    output.Add(address2, "Address2")
    output.Add(city, "City")
    output.Add(state, "State")
    output.Add(zip, "Zip")
    Return output
End Function

Private Function getLastIndexOf(ByVal sArray As String(), ByVal checkArray As String()) As Integer
    Dim sourceIndex As Integer = 0
    Dim outputIndex As Integer = 0
    For Each item As String In checkArray
        For Each source As String In sArray
            If source.ToLower = item.ToLower Then
                outputIndex = sourceIndex
                If item.ToLower = "box" Then
                    outputIndex = outputIndex + 1
                End If
            End If
            sourceIndex = sourceIndex + 1
        Next
        sourceIndex = 0
    Next
    Return outputIndex
End Function

Passing the parseAddress function "A. P. Croll & Son 2299 Lewes-Georgetown Hwy, Georgetown, DE 19947" returns:

2299 Lewes-Georgetown Hwy
A. P. Croll & Son  
Georgetown
DE
19947

Answer 2

SmartyStreets has a new feature that extracts addresses from arbitrary input strings. (Note: I don't work at SmartyStreets.)

It successfully extracted all addresses from the sample input given in the question above. (By the way, only 9 of those 10 addresses are valid.)

Here's some of the output:

And here's the CSV-formatted output of that same request:

ID,Start,End,Segment,Verified,Candidate,Firm,FirstLine,SecondLine,LastLine,City,State,ZIPCode,County,DpvFootnotes,DeliveryPointBarcode,Active,Vacant,CMRA,MatchCode,Latitude,Longitude,Precision,RDI,RecordType,BuildingDefaultIndicator,CongressionalDistrict,Footnotes
1,32,79,"2299 Lewes-Georgetown Hwy, Georgetown, DE 19947",N,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
2,81,119,"11522 Shawnee Road, Greenwood DE 19950",Y,0,,11522 Shawnee Rd,,Greenwood DE 19950-5209,Greenwood,DE,19950,Sussex,AABB,199505209226,Y,N,N,Y,38.82865,-75.54907,Zip9,Residential,S,,AL,N#
3,121,160,"144 Kings Highway, S.W. Dover, DE 19901",Y,0,,144 Kings Hwy,,Dover DE 19901-7308,Dover,DE,19901,Kent,AABB,199017308444,Y,N,N,Y,39.16081,-75.52377,Zip9,Commercial,S,,AL,L#
4,190,232,"2 Penns Way Suite 405 New Castle, DE 19720",Y,0,,2 Penns Way Ste 405,,New Castle DE 19720-2407,New Castle,DE,19720,New Castle,AABB,197202407053,Y,N,N,Y,39.68332,-75.61043,Zip9,Commercial,H,,AL,N#
5,247,285,"33 Bridle Ridge Court, Lewes, DE 19958",Y,0,,33 Bridle Ridge Cir,,Lewes DE 19958-8961,Lewes,DE,19958,Sussex,AABB,199588961338,Y,N,N,Y,38.72749,-75.17055,Zip7,Residential,S,,AL,L#
6,306,339,"2742 Pulaski Hwy Newark, DE 19711",Y,0,,2742 Pulaski Hwy,,Newark DE 19702-3911,Newark,DE,19702,New Castle,AABB,197023911421,Y,N,N,Y,39.60328,-75.75869,Zip9,Commercial,S,,AL,A#
7,341,378,"2284 Bryn Zion Road, Smyrna, DE 19904",Y,0,,2284 Bryn Zion Rd,,Smyrna DE 19977-3895,Smyrna,DE,19977,Kent,AABB,199773895840,Y,N,N,Y,39.23937,-75.64065,Zip7,Residential,S,,AL,A#N#
8,406,450,"1500 Serpentine Road, Suite 100 Baltimore MD",Y,0,,1500 Serpentine Rd Ste 100,,Baltimore MD 21209-2034,Baltimore,MD,21209,Baltimore,AABB,212092034250,Y,N,N,Y,39.38194,-76.65856,Zip9,Commercial,H,,03,N#
9,455,495,"580 North Dupont Highway Dover, DE 19901",Y,0,,580 N DuPont Hwy,,Dover DE 19901-3961,Dover,DE,19901,Kent,AABB,199013961803,Y,N,N,Y,39.17576,-75.5241,Zip9,Commercial,S,,AL,N#
10,497,525,"P.O. Box 778 Dover, DE 19903",Y,0,,PO Box 778,,Dover DE 19903-0778,Dover,DE,19903,Kent,AABB,199030778781,Y,N,N,Y,39.20946,-75.57012,Zip5,Residential,P,,AL,

I was the developer who originally wrote the service. The algorithm we implemented is a bit different from any specific answers here, but each extracted address is verified against the address lookup API, so you can be sure if it's valid or not. Each verified result is guaranteed, but we know the other results won't be perfect because, as has been made abundantly clear in this thread, addresses are unpredictable, even for humans sometimes.

Answer 3

If it's human entered data, then you'll spend too much time trying to code around the exceptions.

Try:

1. Regular expression to extract the zip code

2. Zip code lookup (via appropriate government DB) to get the correct address

3. Get an intern to manually verify the new data matches the old

Answer 4

This won't solve your problem, but if you only needed lat/long data for these addresses, the Google Maps API will parse non-formatted addresses pretty well.

Good suggestion, alternatively you can execute a CURL request for each address to Google Maps and it will return the properly formatted address. From that, you can regex to your heart's content.

Answer 5

using google API

$d=str_replace(" ", "+", $address_url);
$completeurl ="http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?address=".$d."&sensor=true"; 
$phpobject = simplexml_load_file($completeurl);
print_r($phpobject);

Answer 6

You might want to check this out!! http://jgeocoder.sourceforge.net/parser.html Worked like a charm for me.