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parsing postal address

in Using jQuery • 10 years ago

Let's say I have this string:

<div>john doe is nice guy btw 8240 E marblehead way 92808 is also</div>

or this string:

<div>sky being blue? in the world is true? 123 Main St., apt c420 Anywhere, USA 12345 jackfroast nipping on the firehead</div>

How would I go about parsing a string similar to the one of the strings above, extracting the address and document.write-ing the address? Would this involve some sort of regex code?

I've tried looking online for a solution using jQuery/Javascript, but to no avail.

Can somebody point me in the right direction? How would I go about accomplishing this in jQuery/JavaScript?

Thank you in advance!

Replies(10)

jakecigar

Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

You have extremely messy addresses! You could search for the zip code, and backup to the first number. But determining a name would be difficult.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16413/parse-usable-street-address-city-state-zip-from-a-string outlines some interesting methods.

Good luck!

JΛ̊KE

dumbsearch

Re: Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

It explains what It could parse for, but what technology could I use to parse using jQuery?

jakecigar

Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

jQuery would only handle a very small part of the job. You should do the task in whatever language you know best. One where you could quickly change the heuristics.

jQuery is a library of function to do DOM manipulation, not text processing. Most of the work would be in JavaScript if you choose jQuery.

If you have less than several thousand addresses it would be cheaper to hire a data entry person.

JΛ̊KE

dumbsearch

Re: Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

Ah no, I couldn't hire a data entry person, because these addresses are user-generated in my service (geolocation).

Could you point me in what technologies I could accomplish this with? Like theoretically how I could do this in JavaScript?

Thanks for the help. :)

jakecigar

Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

A data entry person would read the messy addresses and enter them into a form.

Any programming language could do the job. I would use PERL LISP or SNOBOL4 for such a job, but that’s just me. I could also do it in C, Java, Python, XSL or even JavaScript, Applescript, a UNIX shell script, or MS-DOS bat files, but I probably wouldn’t.

Do you or your team know any programming languages?

JΛ̊KE

dumbsearch

Re: Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

I'm creating a iOS reminder web app, and parsing a postal address is necessary to highlight the postal address in the reminder and link to the address in the native Maps app.

Depending how much traffic volume I'm expecting, a data entry person would not suit my needs.

I'm quite good at HTML, CSS, PHP (quite bad at JavaScript). Yes, regex can be accomplished very well with PHP (and I know how to do it), but I'm also parsing dates, (which PHP can't do locally), so I'm forced to utilize JavaScript or browser languages...

jakecigar

Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

PHP is your answer. A simple search for "php date" will show you how to parse dates.

JΛ̊KE

dumbsearch

Re: Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

Yeah, but the problem with PHP dates is the fact that they're not localized. They just grab the time from the server. So my server is an Arizona, and if someone is in like India, they will get Arizona time. :|

jakecigar

Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

You get the time from their client browser. local time - PHP users local time - Stack Overflow

in JavaScript

gmtoffset = (new Date).getTimezoneOffset() / 60;

Just put that value in the form the transmit to you

Or in jQuery

$('#hiddenGMTInput').val ( (new Date).getTimezoneOffset() / 60 )

JΛ̊KE

dumbsearch

Re: Re: parsing postal address

10 years ago

Thanks for the scripts, but in PHP (as the StackOveflow post best answer said) it's impossible to get the accurate location without prompting the user for their timezone, which I can't do in my case.

I'm using JavaScript/jQuery for the date, but because of that, (and because as you said earlier that JavaScript can't parse addresses very well), I can't parse the addresses using PHP.

But I did find a workaround.

This script I found on Stack Overflow:

var someText="go to mall (8240 E marblehead Way 92808) is the best 7143139656 is a phone number";
alert(someText.match(/$([^)]*)$[^(]*$/)[1]);

allows me to parse the addresses, as long as I ask my users to write the address in parenthesis.

Thanks for your help. :)

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