NAME

Geo::libpostal - Perl bindings for libpostal

SYNOPSIS

  use Geo::libpostal ':all';

  # normalize an address
  my @addresses = expand_address('120 E 96th St New York');

  # parse addresses into their components
  my %address = parse_address('The Book Club 100-106 Leonard St Shoreditch London EC2A 4RH, United Kingdom');

  # %address contains:
  # (
  #   road         => 'leonard st',
  #   postcode     => 'ec2a 4rh',
  #   house        => 'the book club',
  #   house_number => '100-106',
  #   suburb       => 'shoreditch',
  #   country      => 'united kingdom',
  #   city         => 'london'
  # );

DESCRIPTION

libpostal is a C library for parsing/normalizing international street addresses. Address strings can be normalized using expand_address which returns a list of valid variations so you can check for duplicates in your dataset. It supports normalization in over 60 languages. An address string can also be parsed into its constituent parts using parse_address such as house name, number, city and postcode.

FUNCTIONS

expand_address

  use Geo::libpostal 'expand_address';

  my @ny_addresses = expand_address('120 E 96th St New York');
  my @fr_addresses = expand_address('Quatre vingt douze R. de l\'Église');

Takes an address string and returns a list of known variants. Useful for normalization. Accepts many boolean options:

  expand_address('120 E 96th St New York',
      latin_ascii => 1,
      transliterate => 1,
      strip_accents => 1,
      decompose => 1,
      lowercase => 1,
      trim_string => 1,
      drop_parentheticals => 1,
      replace_numeric_hyphens => 1,
      delete_numeric_hyphens => 1,
      split_alpha_from_numeric => 1,
      replace_word_hyphens => 1,
      delete_word_hyphens => 1,
      delete_final_periods => 1,
      delete_acronym_periods => 1,
      drop_english_possessives => 1,
      delete_apostrophes => 1,
      expand_numex => 1,
      roman_numerals => 1,
  );

Warning: old versions of libpostal segfault if all options are set to false. Geo::libpostal includes a unit test for this.

Also accepts an arrayref of language codes per ISO 639-1:

 expand_address('120 E 96th St New York', languages => [qw(en fr)]);

This is useful if you are normalizing addresses in multiple languages.

Finally expand_address accepts an option for which address components to expand. This is a 16 bit integer bitmask. These constants are exported with the :all tag:

  $ADDRESS_NONE
  $ADDRESS_ANY
  $ADDRESS_NAME
  $ADDRESS_HOUSE_NUMBER
  $ADDRESS_STREET
  $ADDRESS_UNIT
  $ADDRESS_LOCALITY
  $ADDRESS_ADMIN1
  $ADDRESS_ADMIN2
  $ADDRESS_ADMIN3
  $ADDRESS_ADMIN4
  $ADDRESS_ADMIN_OTHER
  $ADDRESS_COUNTRY
  $ADDRESS_POSTAL_CODE
  $ADDRESS_NEIGHBORHOOD
  $ADDRESS_ALL

These are the default components used by libpostal:

  use Geo::libpostal ':all';

  expand_address('120 E 96th St New York',
    components => $ADDRESS_NAME | $ADDRESS_HOUSE_NUMBER | $ADDRESS_STREET | $ADDRESS_UNIT
  );

The constant $ADDRESS_ALL uses all components:

  expand_address('120 E 96th St New York',
    components => $ADDRESS_ALL
  );

expand_address will die on undef and empty addresses, odd numbers of options and unrecognized options. Exported on request.

parse_address

  use Geo::libpostal 'parse_address';

  my %ny_address = parse_address('120 E 96th St New York');
  my %fr_address = parse_address('Quatre vingt douze R. de l\'Église');

Will die on undef and empty addresses. Exported on request.

parse_address may return duplicate labels for invalid addresses strings.

WARNING

libpostal uses setup and teardown functions. Setup is lazily loaded. Teardown occurs in an END block automatically.

• Old versions of libpostal Geo::libpostal will segfault if _teardown() is called twice (this module includes a unit test for this).

• If expand_address or parse_address is called after teardown, old versions of libpostal will error (this module includes a unit test for this too).

• libpostal is not thread-safe.

EXTERNAL DEPENDENCIES

libpostal is required. Geo::libpostal uses pkg-config to support custom install locations. Sometimes pkg-config can't find the library by default, in those cases just do:

  $ find / -name libpostal.pc 2>/dev/null
  /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/libpostal.pc

  $ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

And then do a manual installation of Geo::libpostal.

INSTALLATION

You can install this module with CPAN:

  $ cpan Geo::libpostal

Or clone it from GitHub and install it manually:

  $ git clone https://github.com/dnmfarrell/Geo-libpostal
  $ cd Geo-libpostal
  $ perl Makefile.PL
  $ make
  $ make test
  $ make install

AUTHOR

© 2016 David Farrell

LICENSE

See LICENSE

cpanm Geo::libpostal

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Geo::libpostal