ISO Standard Street Addresses?

Question

Is there an ISO standard address format? I can't seem to find one, and I'd like to know for object- and database-design purposes.

(One interesting document that shows a bunch of formats is this: http://www.bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html, but it's insane!)

Solution 1

No; each country defines its own standard.

There have been a number of questions about this in times past, including:

• Best practices for storing postal addresses in an RDBMS
• Is there a common street address database design for all addresses of the world

The second of those itself has references to a number of other SO questions.

You might want to check out the grandiosely named Universal Postal Union and its standards.

Solution 2

There are none. However, you can also consider that place is usually contained in a bigger place.

So, you can also use the hierarchical structure of places in following an address format. Which also means it differs from country-to-country.

You can read stuffs about this on:

• Universal Postal Union's paper Addressing the world, an address for everyone
• Place ontology from schema.org
• PostalAddress ontology from schema.org.

Solution 3

Check out the address below.

Address standards A collection of information on address standards ISO 19160, Addressing

https://standards.iso.org/iso/19160/

http://www.isotc211.org/

Comments

[Jerry Coffin]

Given the variety of formats in use, I can't imagine an ISO standard for it getting passed, and even if one did it clearly wouldn't mean much.

[John Saunders]

possible duplicate of Is there common street addresses database design for all addresses of the world?

[Michał Kosmulski]

There is no single standard, even at a very generic level. See: falsehoods programmers believe about addresses

[anonymous]

I did come across the UPU site in searching around, but I was intimidated by it. "Grandiose" is apt. I don't suppose you could point me towards a page on the site that I should read?

[Jonathan Leffler]

See SO 929684, which is referenced from the second question above. Also here under the UPU web site.

[likeitlikeit]

Your post is interesting, although the draft has barely made it beyond the basic-structure level. As it stands, it's of no help.