postcode VS postalcode

[frodrigo]

Every geocoder API use postalcode in place of postcode.

[yohanboniface]

Every

At least Photon uses postcode, please be a bit more specific, we need accurate informations to take good decisions :)

[frodrigo]

postalcode : HERE, Google, OSM tag, Nominatim
postcode: opencagedata

[riordan]

It just so happens I've been looking across a large variety of geocoders terminologies lately, so perhaps I can be of service. Don't treat this as a comprehensive survey.

Team Postcode:

• Photon
• OpenCageData

Team Postalcode:

• Geocoders:
  • HERE
  • Bing
  • Mapquest
  • ESRI | "Postal"
  • Yahoo! BOSS Geo Services | "postal"
  • Michelin | Yes the tire and restaurant people have a comprehensive geo API. Who knew?!
  • Geocode.farm | Included for the excellent TLD. No other reason.
  • Geocoder.ca
• Data Sources:
  • OSM Tags
  • Wikidata
  • Geonames Ontology
  • Schema.org

Team None of the Above:

• Nominatim | BOTH!
• Baidu | Has no semantic formatting of codes.
• Yandex | No Codes
• Geocoder.us | Only covers United States of America; uses zip

Other supporting things:
The Universal Postal Union calls them as Post Codes. It's a pretty amazing organization.

[yohanboniface]

Awesome! This gives some good points to "postalcode" :)
(I don't see Pelias in the list, though ;) )

Michelin | Yes the tire and restaurant people have a comprehensive geo API. Who knew?!

A friend of mine works there cc @vdct ;)

[riordan]

I figured my commentary on this should remain separate from the above survey.

Here's where we get into semantics. I tend toward postal code the definitive & disambiguating name in this context. In this case, we're working on a standard that will (hopefully) be used frequently alongside HTTP, which has as one of its primary operators POST. In order to preserve (some) clarity between two very distinct ideas, I'd like to throw my support behind postalcode (or postal_code, as Google has done, preserving the complete term) for clarity and interoperability.

[orangejulius]

👍 for disambiguating between HTTP POST and postcode

[dianashk]

(I don't see Pelias in the list, though ;) )

@yohanboniface, we're in the process of redesigning our API (hence the exhaustive survey of existing things @riordan has referenced above) to address naming conventions, among other things. This is also why we have taken such an interest in what you're doing here, as specifying the format of the results is a large piece of the API redesign puzzle.

[riordan]

@yohanboniface @vdct the Michelin geocoder gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Kick the tires on that API."

I'll see myself out...

[vdct]

@riordan @yohanboniface :D