Webservice to get City Names by giving Zip Codes

Question

I need a reliable webserivce which gives corresponding city name by passing zip code. This webservice should work at any time. This webservice will be used in the production also.

Solution 1

I found a couple of ways to do this with web based APIs. I think the US Postal Service would be the most accurate, since Zip codes are their thing, but Ziptastic looks much easier.

Using the US Postal Service HTTP/XML API

According to this page on the US Postal Service website which documents their XML based web API, specifically Section 4.0 (page 22) of this PDF document, they have a URL where you can send an XML request containing a 5 digit Zip Code and they will respond with an XML document containing the corresponding City and State.

According to their documentation, here's what you would send:

http://SERVERNAME/ShippingAPITest.dll?API=CityStateLookup&XML=<CityStateLookupRequest%20USERID="xxxxxxx"><ZipCode ID= "0"><Zip5>90210</Zip5></ZipCode></CityStateLookupRequest>

And here's what you would receive back:

<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<CityStateLookupResponse> 
    <ZipCode ID="0"> 
        <Zip5>90210</Zip5> 
        <City>BEVERLY HILLS</City> 
        <State>CA</State> 
    </ZipCode> 
</CityStateLookupResponse>

USPS does require that you register with them before you can use the API, but, as far as I could tell, there is no charge for access. By the way, their API has some other features: you can do Address Standardization and Zip Code Lookup, as well as the whole suite of tracking, shipping, labels, etc.

Using the Ziptastic HTTP/JSON API

This is a pretty new service, but according to their documentation, it looks like all you need to do is send a GET request to http://ziptasticapi.com, like so:

GET http://ziptasticapi.com/48867

And they will return a JSON object along the lines of:

{"country": "US", "state": "MI", "city": "OWOSSO"}

Indeed, it works. You can test this from a command line by doing something like:

curl http://ziptasticapi.com/48867 

Solution 2

http://www.geonames.org/

http://www.geonames.org/postal-codes/

has it for multiple countries

Solution 3

perhaps http://www.webservicex.net/uszip.asmx?op=GetInfoByZIP would work for you

Solution 4

The Yahoo PlaceFinder API will work for this type of query.

http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/guide/index.html

I believe that

http://where.yahooapis.com/geocode?appid=<appID>&postal=<zipCode>

will get you what you're looking for.

Solution 5

Also http://www.zipwise.com/webservices gives XML and JSON results for free for zip code lookups, radius searches, reverse lookups, and latitude/longitude stuff.

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Comments

[CrowderSoup]

This looks like a really good bet, you just pass in the ZIP code and then it returns the city name, along with latitude and longitude in a JSON string.

[karthik k]

Getting error while adding this URL as a web reference

[Daniel A. White]

geonames.org/export/client-libraries.html

[karthik k]

After adding this url as a webreference I am unable to get the methods of the webservice.

[Stuart Siegler]

webservicex.net/uszip.asmx will give you the methods.

[MethodMan]

Thanks again Stuart actually +2

[Paul Chernoch]

Very simple API. Thanks.

[Luke A. Leber]

Quick note -- that service doesn't currently support CORS (if anyone else is trying to find an ajax solution).

[Sana Ahmed]

This service doesnt give for specific zipcodes. Some examples are :89179, 75965, 72019, 33449, 76549, 75803, 97703, 76210, 84005

[Stuart Siegler]

@Sana I think this was a sample service designed for testing web service calls and processing. I don't believe it was meant to be an actual zip code support service, and there are better ones now...

[Sana Ahmed]

@StuartSiegler Can you specify some ?

[Stuart Siegler]

@Sana, zipwise is free: zipwise.com/webservices