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raven
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
Posts: 84
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
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 Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:29 am Post subject: Re: huh? |
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| hmarq wrote: | | I'd like to do the postal code search for more than US, but it's a matter of getting the postal codes with lat/lon info *for free* ... that doesn't seem easy to find ... even for the US I had to use 2000 Census data ... so it's dated already. |
like someone pointed out earlier in this thread, for germany this information is available from http://opengeodb.de/ and it's available under the LGPL, so it's not only free as in "free beer", it's even free as in "free speech"... ;)
cya,
raven
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hmarq
Site Admin
Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 351
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:00 am Post subject: |
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Could someone translate this for me (to English  )
# Bedeutung der einzelnen Felder:
#
# Felder 1 bis 7: hierarchische Verwaltungsgliederung, hier:
# Feld 1: Staat (DE == Deutschland)
# Feld 2: Bundesland, s.o.
# Feld 3: Regierungsbezirk
# Feld 4: Landkreis
# Feld 5: Verwaltungszusammenschluss
# Feld 6: Ort
# Feld 7: Ortsteil/Stadtteil
# Feld 8: Gemeindeteil unspezifizierter Art
# Felder 9 und 10: Koordinaten:
# Feld 9: Breitengrad
# Feld 10: L<E4>ngengrad
# Felder 11 und 12: Andere Merkmale, hier:
# Feld 11: Autokennzeichen
# Feld 12: Postleitzahl(en) |
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nici-
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 199
Location: Hürth near Cologne, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:01 am Post subject: Re: huh? |
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| hmarq wrote: | | It's been at least a couple weeks since the data was pulled. I know some dups come up in the city search ... it's only as good as the data I have which is from NIMA and is essentially the same dataset and model that heavens-above.com uses for searching. |
Strange. I used heavens-above sometimes and don't remember facing such an effect of multiply (and country-ignoring) output for one city name... But it's a long time, I last used it.
| Quote: | | I'm not sure what you're getting at with respect to listing coords ... the page works 'sanely' I think ... enter a country and a city, it brings back a list, click on the list and it does a search based on the coords of that city. |
Ah, ok. No, I believed City-Search might do a search for the Name-String in the City-Field of the database. And thus proposed to base the search on coords in the city search - as in the 'normal coords search'. You were that smart already 
| Quote: | | Are you saying you want me to *display* the coords with the listing? |
Nope, I wasn't. But anyway, may be a good idea!
| Quote: | | I got the impression you though it was doing a city-name search on the database, it isn't, it has coords attached each name. |
You got it. I underestimated your beta. Or overestimated the 'start simple'-Tag
| Quote: | | That dataset is pretty complete too ... it's about 1.3Million 'places' around the globe, then another 700,000 for the US alone (that data comes from USGS). |
Then I guess there might somthing buggy with the 'Country'-filter on the data when chosen in the form...
| Quote: | | I'd like to do the postal code search for more than US, but it's a matter of getting the postal codes with lat/lon info *for free* ... that doesn't seem easy to find ... even for the US I had to use 2000 Census data ... so it's dated already. |
For Germany I gave you the link. And for Austria and Switzerland the same project is working on such lists, as I understand. If I can be of any help with that, tell me.
so long!
nici-
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nici-
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 199
Location: Hürth near Cologne, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| hmarq wrote: | | Could someone translate this for me (to English ) |
sure!
# Felder 1 bis 7: hierarchische Verwaltungsgliederung, hier:
Fields 1-7: ** I can't translate this word. The meaning however is (as I understand the data: the membership of the town in country, administration departments/municipals and so on. The district, the towns belongs to and so on. Let's have a closer look:
# Feld 1: Staat (DE == Deutschland)
1 - Country (DE == Germany)*
(* as the project will add Switzerland and Austria too)
# Feld 2: Bundesland, s.o.
2 - (federal) state
# Feld 3: Regierungsbezirk
3 - administrative district
# Feld 4: Landkreis
4 - county district (?*)
(* I don't know the word, nor does Leo give me something, I'd choose. Anyway, its something 'under' the administrative district in the governmental hierarchy)
# Feld 5: Verwaltungszusammenschluss
5 - Gosh, I can't find a word for THAT! Again, it's some governmental structure thing. When some country districts join their administrations.
An 'administration merger' if you want, but without building a real country district, I guess. I'd say forget it or make it one with Field 4.
# Feld 6: Ort
6 - Town/City
# Feld 7: Ortsteil/Stadtteil
7 - district (in town)
# Feld 8: Gemeindeteil unspezifizierter Art
8 - Arrrgh. 'Part of unspecific commune'. I guess, there are some city districts that have names but are no 'real' (officially named) district. Yet they had to put the name somewhere. Which file is this? I'd like to see some examples.
# Felder 9 und 10: Koordinaten:
9-10 - Coords
# Feld 9: Breitengrad
9 - latitude
# Feld 10: L<E4>ngengrad
10 - longitude
# Felder 11 und 12: Andere Merkmale, hier:
11-12 - other characteristics
# Feld 11: Autokennzeichen
11 - license plate code
* German license plates go like this:
B - XY 1234
with first letter(s) (1-3) for the city resp. country district
and next letters plus numbers for the individual car.
# Feld 12: Postleitzahl(en)[/quote]
12 - ZIP code
HTH
nici-
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hmarq
Site Admin
Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 351
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:48 am Post subject: |
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| nici- wrote: |
# Feld 8: Gemeindeteil unspezifizierter Art
8 - Arrrgh. 'Part of unspecific commune'. I guess, there are some city districts that have names but are no 'real' (officially named) district. Yet they had to put the name somewhere. Which file is this? I'd like to see some examples.
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This is the geodb0.1.1 file ... I don't know if there is any data in this field, it's just the descriptor in the files header.
Yes quite a bit, thank you! So what do I need to do a lookup and have it be distinct? Since your postal code seems to follow the same conention as the US, 5 digits I'll have to at least make folks pick the country, but in Germany, is postal code distinct below that level, or is there duplication within state/administrative districts? ... and if there is duplication, what else to I need to look at to ensure I'm picking the correct one? |
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raven
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
Posts: 84
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 8:21 am Post subject: |
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| hmarq wrote: | | So what do I need to do a lookup and have it be distinct? Since your postal code seems to follow the same conention as the US, 5 digits I'll have to at least make folks pick the country, but in Germany, is postal code distinct below that level, or is there duplication within state/administrative districts? ... and if there is duplication, what else to I need to look at to ensure I'm picking the correct one? |
nope, there is no duplication, the german postal code is distinct for the whole country, every postal code is unique.
the only possible "problem" is, that bigger cities often have several postal codes. that can be seen in the opengeodb file. take a look at the entry for bielefeld:
| Code: | DE; NW; Detmold; Kreisfreie Stadt; ; Bielefeld; ; ; 52.0333; 8.53333; BI; 33602,33604,33605,33607,33609,33611,33613,33615,33617,33619,33647,33649,33659,33689,
33699,33719,33729,33739
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lets decode this example:
"DE" means germany (DEutschland), "NW" is the state (Northrhine-Westfalia in my case), "Detmold" is the administrative district, "Kreisfreie Stadt" means that bielefeld has no county (Landkreis) associated with it (normaly this would be the field for the county), field 5 is empty, "Bielefeld" is the name of the city, field 7 is empty (it would be the district or part of a town), field 8 is empty (dunno really what it would be, probably some other "part of town" thing), "52.0333" is the latitude, "8.53333" is the longtitude, "BI" is the license-plate code nici explained, all those numbers in field 12 are the postal codes for bielefeld.
some german vocabulary to help you with the rest of the file:
Abkürzungen = abbreviations
Bundesland = state (Bundesländer is the plural)
Stadt, Ort = city, town
Stadtteil, Ortsteil = district (of a city), part of town
Kreis / Landkreis = county
Autokennzeichen = license plates
Postleitzahl, PLZ = postal code
Feld, Felder = field, fields
a very good german <-> english online dictionary is available on http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/
-raven
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hmarq
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Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 351
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:11 am Post subject: |
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Thanks Raven and nici-
The mulitple postal codes per city isn't a problem ... it's the same way in the US, I just have to parse that list of zips into distinct entries. The actually 'problem' is that it gives the same coords for each zip ... that's probably not really accurate, but it's the data that's available so we'll use it. |
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nici-
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 199
Location: Hürth near Cologne, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:19 am Post subject: |
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| hmarq wrote: | | Since your postal code seems to follow the same conention as the US, 5 digits I'll have to at least make folks pick the country |
Seems so.
| Quote: | | , but in Germany, is postal code distinct below that level, or is there duplication within state/administrative districts? |
No duplication, absolutely distinct. A letter send to DE-12345 is defined to go to a defines relatively small area. See:
http://auto.germany.ru/plz.html for overview and
http://www.deutschepost.de/dpag?check=yes&lang=de_DE&xmlFile=link1776_1050 for a detail.
nici-
PS: Do you need ZIP codes of Austria and Switzerland?
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nici-
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 199
Location: Hürth near Cologne, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2003 11:38 am Post subject: |
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| nici- wrote: |
PS: Do you need ZIP codes of Austria and Switzerland? |
Hej, check out this site! ZIP codes for a lot of countries!
nici-
PS: I can't find any license hints or Terms of Usage. Perhaps one should just contact this Kai...
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raven
Joined: 29 Sep 2003
Posts: 84
Location: Bielefeld, Germany
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| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:43 am Post subject: |
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| nici- wrote: | | Hej, check out this site! ZIP codes for a lot of countries! |
well, that site has the zipcodes, but where would we get the "zipcode <-> coordinates" connection?
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Renegade Knight
Joined: 15 Sep 2003
Posts: 151
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| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 11:50 am Post subject: |
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| You might have to have someone just go stand there and report the coordinates! |
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nici-
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
Posts: 199
Location: Hürth near Cologne, Germany
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| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 1:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Renegade Knight wrote: | | You might have to have someone just go stand there and report the coordinates! |
Yep. I guess, we can 'find' coords for the bigger cities. But perhaps we can make it a challenge for the community fo find coords for the ZIPs
I would have searched for coord-files next, only Linus came from his afternoon nap and demanded bread and circuses...
nici-
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Scout
Joined: 16 Sep 2003
Posts: 235
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| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2003 2:38 pm Post subject: |
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| nici- wrote: | | Yep. I guess, we can 'find' coords for the bigger cities. But perhaps we can make it a challenge for the community fo find coords for the ZIPs ;-) |
Great idea. Set it up like a "locationless" cache. Visit a post office and submit its postal code and geographical coordinates. No post office? No problem. Just provide any coordinates from that postal code. The community can have fun with it and create a value-added service as well.
Maybe give players perpetual sponsorship rights on the opencaching network to the postal codes they submit. "The following caches near ZIP code 75081 are brought to you courtesy of nici-"
Let's come up with more ways the geocaching community can support itself instead of relying on payments to some commercial business to buy a solution and sell it back to the community.
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ju66l3r
Joined: 18 Sep 2003
Posts: 10
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| Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2003 11:34 am Post subject: |
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Here you go:
http://www.zipinfo.com/search/zipcode.htm
It definitely gave different numbers for "Brighton, MA" and "Boston, MA" but I don't know if they were necessarily accurate.
EDIT: The coordinates given for Brighton, MA were spot-on the post office when I checked at randmcnally.com. Impressive.
I'm sure they probably are though. You can also buy a full copy of the data from this website. My guess is that you could also just hit it a few hundred times with automated searches and get the info you needed.
The URL is not encoded when you submit a search, so you could easily setup a cgi to post and parse the results over and over again....I don't know how long it would take them to figure out that you were doing it though... hehe... |
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