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GetFullAddress

Gets a list of addresses on a postcode

Live Demo

This service is hosted in multiple countries. Select your preferred country to see the appropriate endpoint URLs.

Changing the hosting country does not affect the data returned by the service. However you may wish to select a particular country based on your data residency requirements or network latency.
JSON
Open API
SOAP

Description

This is the main method to do postcode lookup operations.

Supply:

  • postcode - the full postcode to get the address for
  • building - an optional building to filter the results by

To get all the buildings in a postcode, leave the building parameter blank.

Each address will be returned as a FormattedAddress, which includes both a human-readable address, and a RawPAFAddress which contains a separate field for each part of the address, e.g. building number, street name etc. The details of how the formatted version of the address is generated from the raw address is controlled by the options described below. For more information and examples on the formatting options, please see the Address Formatting page.

If the specified postcode is syntactically incorrect, Status.Success will be false and Status.ErrorMessage will indicate that an invalid postcode has been entered.

If you do not have a full postcode, use the FindAddress or FindFullAddress methods instead.

Credit Usage

Each request to this method consumes 1 AddressCapture credit.

Parameters

The following parameters can be supplied to this method

username

username

See the available authentication methods. If you are using username & password authentication, specify the username to authenticate as. If you are using API Key authentication and you are not using the JSON, Javascript or ADO APIs, use your API Key here with the prefix apikey-, e.g. apikey-ABCD-1234-EFGH-5678
password

password

If you are using username & password authentication, specify the password to use for authentication. Otherwise leave this blank.
licence

licence

As the Royal Mail PAF database can be licensed in multiple ways, this parameter indicates under which license you are accessing the data. This must match the variant you have a license or credits for - if you are unsure which option to choose, please contact your account manager

postcode

postcode

The full postcode to get addresses for. Formatting of the postcode does not matter so "ch24ne", "CH2 4NE", "ch02 4Ne" are all accepted.

building

building

An optional value to filter the returned addresses by building name, number, sub-premise (e.g. flat number) or company name. If null or "" are supplied, all addresses on the postcode are included in the result.

options

options

An array of options that control further details of how this method operates. See the Advanced Options section below for more information.

Advanced Options

The following options can be specified as part of the option parameter. Each option is specified as a key/value pair. The list of available names is shown below, along with a description of the allowable values for that name.

Common Options
Name Description
ApplicationName

ApplicationName

Gives the name of the calling application - used to break down usage by application in the usage reports on the dashboard
Address Formatting Options
There are a large number of options to control how the raw address details are combined & formatted for presentation. They are described in more detail with live interactive examples on the address formatting reference. A summary of the available options is also listed below.
Name Description
Formatter

Formatter

Pick from one of the available formatters to control how the raw address is converted into a human-readable address:
  • DefaultFormatter
  • PAFStandardFormatter
  • NoOrganisationFormatter
MaxLines

MaxLines

The number of lines to format the address over. An additional line will be included at the end of the results for the postcode
MaxLineLength

MaxLineLength

The maximum number of characters that can appear in each address line
FixTownCounty

FixTownCounty

true to ensure that the town and county are returned in the last two address lines, or false if they should appear in the first available line
FixBuilding

FixBuilding

Ensures the building name/number is always placed in the first line
NormalizeCase

NormalizeCase

Converts all text in the address except the town name to proper case
NormalizeTownCase

NormalizeTownCase

Converts the town name to proper case
UseAnyAvailableCounty

UseAnyAvailableCounty

Uses any available county to populate the formatted address, not just the postal county
ExcludeCounty

ExcludeCounty

Excludes the county, if any, from the formatted address
UnwantedPunctuation

UnwantedPunctuation

A string containing any punctuation characters to be removed from the formatted address
Geocoding Options
Note: Geocoding information is not available for all addresses. Some addresses (e.g. PO Boxes) do not represent a physical location, while for some countries (including Isle of Man and Channel Islands) the data is not currently available. The information requested by these options will be returned wherever possible, but is not guaranteed for all addresses.
Name Description
IncludeLocation

IncludeLocation

Includes location information (latitude/longitude, easting/northing and/or grid reference, depending on country) where possible
IncludeConstituency

IncludeConstituency

Includes the UK parliamentary constituency the address is in where possible
IncludeCountry

IncludeCountry

Include the ISO 2-character code and full name of the country
IncludeAdminArea

IncludeAdminArea

Includes names & codes for the administrative areas the address is in where possible. For UK addresses this can include:
  • County
  • CountyCode
  • District
  • DistrictCode
  • Ward
  • WardCode
  • Country

For UK addresses, this option sets the Country field to the name of the nation within the UK, i.e. "England", "Scotland", "Wales" or "Northern Ireland". This overrides the IncludeCountry option that would otherwise set it to "United Kingdom"

For US addresses the County, CountyCode and District fields can be populated.

Address Unique Reference Options
Note: Only one unique identifier for each address will be returned. An error will be returned if you set more than one of these options to true.
Name Description
IncludeUDPRN

IncludeUDPRN

Set to true to include the UDPRN for UK addresses
IncludeUPRN

IncludeUPRN

Set to true to include the UPRN for UK addresses. This is not available by default and requires additional licensing - speak to your account manager for additional information.

When this option is enabled, more accurate premise-level information is also used for the geocoding information used by the IncludeLocation option.

Dataset Options
Note: Each additional dataset requires additional licensing. If you attempt to use a dataset which your account is not licensed for an error will be returned. Please speak to your account manager to enable additional datasets
Name Description
IncludeMR

IncludeMR

Includes addresses from the UK Multiple Residency database, e.g. multiple flats behind a single letter box, university halls of residence
IncludeNYB

IncludeNYB

Includes addresses from the UK Not Yet Built database, e.g. houses currently being developed
Service-Specific Options
Name Description
ReturnResultCount

ReturnResultCount

Indicates if the ResultCount field in the result should be populated with the total number of addresses returned.

Results

This method returns an object containing the following fields:

Status

Status

Indicates whether the method call was successful, or if some error occurred. If the Success field is true, the other results described below can be used to get the results of the method. If Success is false, some error occurred in calling the method, such as the authentication failed or the account is out of credits. The details of the error can be obtained from the ErrorMessage field, and any other results should be ignored
ResultCount

ResultCount

Contains the number of addresses in the Results field. This field is only populated if the ReturnResultCount option is set to True

Results

Results

Contains an array of addresses that match the query. A formatted version of each address in the array is available in the Address field, and a structured version of the address is available in the RawAddress field.

Live Demo

licence
postcode
building
options
Name Value
Common Options
Address Formatting Options
Geocoding Options
Address Unique Reference Options
Dataset Options
Service-Specific Options

Sample Code