AddressCapture
Provides UK Postcode Lookup services
Overview
Postcode Lookup methods
The AddressCapture web service provides comprehensive methods relating to Postcode Lookup in the UK, using the Royal Mail PAF database.
There are three main search strategies that can be used by this service to find addresses:
- Postcode Search finds an address by postcode - this is the most common use case
- Free-Text Search finds an address by town, street and building in cases where the postcode is not known
- Hierarchical Search starts by searching for a town, drills down to street and finally to address
Formatting
There are a number of options common to many methods in this service to control how the address is formatted.
Each address is supplied by Royal Mail in a raw format where the address information is split over 13 fields. In order to make this into a usable address we reformat it as part of this service. The Address Formatting page describes the options available to control this formatting in detail to ensure the addresses you retrieve match your requirements.