4 ms·

Me too! I've been arguing this for years, and I have yet for someone to reply with a good reason why it shouldn't be handled this way. Bad reasons given: - S

by Deestan 17y ago

Me too! I've been arguing this for years, and I have yet for someone to reply with a good reason why it shouldn't be handled this way. Bad reasons given: - Safeguard against users who can't be relied on to format their own address properly. Fix 1: Don't worry about that. Fix 2: If you really want this, leave the rest of us an option to use a freeform address instead. - "Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then.

zeeone 17y ago
The only reason I can think of is for internal statistics. For example the website owner can run a report on their customers broken down by a state or country. Nowadays with GeoIP, this is obsolete.
- imajes 17y ago
  what if the destination/shipping is different to the billing, or where you buy it from? Using geoip here is mostly irrelevant and incredibly dangerous if you want to get a strong opinion of who your customers actually are, as opposed to where they are buying it from.
jamesbritt 17y ago
'"Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then.' Or let the app first sort out the raw input, make sure it makes sense, then pass it on to the database. I can see wanting to have fine-grained table fields. But I don't like seeing the schema drive the model or the UI. A single textarea really is a strong idea (and like others here have been advocating it fr a few years with mixed results). Seems like these are the sort of mundane tasks computers should be good at. Let humans be quirky and let computers sort it out. Prompt for confirmation as needed.
dpifke 17y ago
"Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then. Much harder when the "database" belongs to a third party such as UPS or Paypal.
kpanghmc 17y ago
There are several legitimate reasons for requiring users to enter in their address in separate fields. The two main ones are: 1. If you need to integrate with third party systems who require you to break up the address. In case you've never tried, parsing addresses is very hard -- if not impossible -- depending on how many formats you need to support. All it takes is one third party library that requires you to break them up to make your life miserable. 2. If you need to categorize your users by country, state, zip, etc. For example, if you need to handle different tax laws for different states or if you need to generate reports on how many users you have from country XYZ.
- Goosey 17y ago
  Are there any promising open source libraries to fill this niche? Or startups offering it as a service API? Honestly this seems like a problem that could be solved once and we all would benefit... And like any good problem, there is probably a profit to be made from it.
  - pyre 17y ago
    It seems like it would make it that much easier if it were a text box and a country selection (rather than just a text area, so you can reliably know the country). Since most countries that I'm familiar with have a limited number of ways of representing an address. The larger variation seems to be between address formats of different countries.
- WingForward 17y ago
  Is parsing the addresses on the back end harder than providing the same number of support formats on the front end?
  - kpanghmc 17y ago
    Parsing on the backend, even when only considering United States addresses is incredibly difficult and error prone. There are apartment numbers, rural routes, PO boxes, circles, streets named after compass directions (i.e. North, South, East, West), streets whose direction names appear before or after the street itself (e.g. N. Main St. vs Main St. N.), military addresses, and the list goes on and on. It's a terrible system really, and the only solution that I've been able to rely upon is having the user parse their own address and supply it to me. At least that way I don't have to spend hours looking through regex statements and edge case detection logic to figure out why a street address was parsed in a particular way.
lkjhgvbnm 17y ago
Because chapter one in the databases for dummies book used address as an example, with fields for address, town, state etc. Then you stick them altogether and print them on the envelope, thus covering chapter2 = report generating.

by Deestan 17y ago

zeeone 17y ago

The only reason I can think of is for internal statistics. For example the website owner can run a report on their customers broken down by a state or country. Nowadays with GeoIP, this is obsolete.

imajes 17y ago
what if the destination/shipping is different to the billing, or where you buy it from? Using geoip here is mostly irrelevant and incredibly dangerous if you want to get a strong opinion of who your customers actually are, as opposed to where they are buying it from.

jamesbritt 17y ago

'"Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then.' Or let the app first sort out the raw input, make sure it makes sense, then pass it on to the database. I can see wanting to have fine-grained table fields. But I don't like seeing the schema drive the model or the UI. A single textarea really is a strong idea (and like others here have been advocating it fr a few years with mixed results). Seems like these are the sort of mundane tasks computers should be good at. Let humans be quirky and let computers sort it out. Prompt for confirmation as needed.

dpifke 17y ago

"Out webshop database has these fields." Fix: Change the database, then. Much harder when the "database" belongs to a third party such as UPS or Paypal.

kpanghmc 17y ago

There are several legitimate reasons for requiring users to enter in their address in separate fields. The two main ones are: 1. If you need to integrate with third party systems who require you to break up the address. In case you've never tried, parsing addresses is very hard -- if not impossible -- depending on how many formats you need to support. All it takes is one third party library that requires you to break them up to make your life miserable. 2. If you need to categorize your users by country, state, zip, etc. For example, if you need to handle different tax laws for different states or if you need to generate reports on how many users you have from country XYZ.

Goosey 17y ago
Are there any promising open source libraries to fill this niche? Or startups offering it as a service API? Honestly this seems like a problem that could be solved once and we all would benefit... And like any good problem, there is probably a profit to be made from it.
- pyre 17y ago
  It seems like it would make it that much easier if it were a text box and a country selection (rather than just a text area, so you can reliably know the country). Since most countries that I'm familiar with have a limited number of ways of representing an address. The larger variation seems to be between address formats of different countries.
WingForward 17y ago
Is parsing the addresses on the back end harder than providing the same number of support formats on the front end?
- kpanghmc 17y ago
  Parsing on the backend, even when only considering United States addresses is incredibly difficult and error prone. There are apartment numbers, rural routes, PO boxes, circles, streets named after compass directions (i.e. North, South, East, West), streets whose direction names appear before or after the street itself (e.g. N. Main St. vs Main St. N.), military addresses, and the list goes on and on. It's a terrible system really, and the only solution that I've been able to rely upon is having the user parse their own address and supply it to me. At least that way I don't have to spend hours looking through regex statements and edge case detection logic to figure out why a street address was parsed in a particular way.

lkjhgvbnm 17y ago

Because chapter one in the databases for dummies book used address as an example, with fields for address, town, state etc. Then you stick them altogether and print them on the envelope, thus covering chapter2 = report generating.