Address capture approaches

Microsoft Visual Studio users

The quickest way of integrating Address CApture into your website is to use our ready-built ASP.NET controls. We have a video tutorial to demonstrate just how quick this can be.

Using Postcode

This is the simplest and fastest method of capturing an address.

By supplying a postcode to the GetFullAddress method, you can retrieve a list of every valid PAF address in that postcode. You can also supply a building name or number or organisation name as well to retrieve only the addresses in the postcode that match those criteria.

Using town, street & building details.

This is the simplest method of capturing an address if you don’t know the postcode, but do know these three key bits of information.

By supplying a town, street and building name/number/organisation to the FindAddress method, you can retrieve a list of possible matching addresses. These addresses are returned as PartialAddresses. After selecting the appropriate address from the list returned, you can retrieve the full details for the partial address using the FetchAddress method.

Using a hierarchical search

If you don’t know the full details of the address you want to find, you can use the hierarchical search features to build up the address one step at a time.

The hierarchical search options are made up of six methods:
LocalitiesByPostcode / LocalitiesByName
StreetsByLocalityKey / StreetsByName
AddressesByStreetKey / AddressesByLocalityKey

Each of these methods returns a list of PartialAddresses, which represent possible matches. Each PartialAddress contains an ID, which can be supplied as input to the next method to be called. The diagram below describes the logic which you can use when deciding which methods to call:

View Address Capture Overview