ideas for handling addresses to recipients
ideas for handling addresses to recipients
- Subject: ideas for handling addresses to recipients
- From: Theodore Petrosky <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 10:52:12 -0400
I have always had a problem with apps that handle addresses. I am starting a project that will have to send mail (statements and such). The problem is this pesky international address convention problem.
US addresses:
RECIPIENT
HOUSE_NUMBER STREET_NAME [STREET_TYPE] [STREET_DIRECTION] [BUILDING] [FLOOR] [APARTMENT]
LOCALITY PROVINCE_ABBREVIATION POSTAL_CODE
UNITED STATES
Canadian:
RECIPIENT
[UNIT_NUMBER]-CIVIC_NUMBER [STREET_NUMBER] [STREET_TYPE] STREET_NAME [STREET_DIRECTION]
LOCALITY PROVINCE_ABBREVIATION POSTAL_CODE
CANADA
UK:
RECIPIENT
[FLOOR] [APARTMENT]
[BUILDING]
[HOUSE_NUMBER] STREET_NAME
[DEPENDENT_LOCALITY]
LOCALITY
POSTAL_CODE
UNITED KINGDOM
Most of the apps that I use today, ignore this altogether and just force the user to accept US mailing order and field names. If you are lucky, you are not limited to the length input of some of the fields and you can maybe force your input to approximate what the address should look like.
I found this website:
http://www.addressdoctor.com/en/countries-data/address-formats.html
So here's the question! How far should one push creating an interface that allows the user to customize the printed address for the recipient?
Obviously, you could go nuts and have a popup to select the country and get the appropriate fields in the correct order. Or like most software just ignore the issue and assume that the rest of the world will finally begin to conform to the obviously perfect and superior format of United States of America addresses :-) !
What are youse guys doing? I wonder what Apple does with this? I mean does Apple ever send mail? I am trying to remember if I ever purchased anything from apple and had it shipped. Is there one interface for the entire world to collect address information? How is this data normalized? Separate table for country?
Ted
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