RE: FN-FORUM: Postcode distance matching

date posted 1st February 2005 15:33

I put something like this together a while ago in ASP. The problem I found
was that postcodes do generally change a bit, so it depends on how accurate
it needs to be.

This is the bare bones of what I did. It works out the distance by using
longitude / Latitude. If you put in something like SW6 and select the
distance it'll tell you which postcodes are within that radius and the
distance in miles. If you know you're way around ASP then it's easy to
adapt.

http://www.jb-media.com/dp/postcode.asp

Give me a shout if you want the scripts.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL REMOVED] [EMAIL REMOVED] On Behalf Of Karl
Bunyan
Sent: 01 February 2005 10:14
To: FN-FORUM / [EMAIL REMOVED]
Subject: RE: FN-FORUM: Postcode distance matching


It's been posted many times, but I've no personal experience of using it:
http://www.cgi-interactive-uk.com/uk_postcodes.html. Does everything, seems
cheap(er).

Karl

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL REMOVED] [EMAIL REMOVED] On
> Behalf Of Dan Norcott
> Sent: 01 February 2005 10:02
> To: FN-FORUM / [EMAIL REMOVED]
> Subject: FN-FORUM: Postcode distance matching
>
>
> Hi All
>
> Client has asked me about postcode search / matching.
> Basically the usual thing where you bash in your postcode,
> and it says "Your nearest store is X miles away."
>
> I looked into this years ago - about 1999 if I remember
> rightly - and at the time I think it was a case of:
>
> - buy some expensive service
> - frig something together yourself
> - offer a cut down service that just matches the first bit of
> the postcode (eg. le11) and returns matching stores.
>
> In that instance, I think the whole job disappeared up its
> own bottom anyway - but now I'm thinking this is a fairly
> common thing, and someone around here probably has experience with it.
>
> What's the most common way? Anyone got any ideas? I'm
> thinking we'll have a table of stores, with addresses
> including postcodes, and some sort of crazy matching thing
> that sorts them by distance using a lookup table of some
> kind... any pointers much appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
> Dan


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