4 ms·

BTW, I'm a guy who has been building address parsing software since 2005. ( geocoder.ca, geocode.xyz ) It is HARD. Currently I'm using machine learning similar

by eruci 8y ago

BTW, I'm a guy who has been building address parsing software since 2005. ( geocoder.ca, geocode.xyz ) It is HARD. Currently I'm using machine learning similarly to libpostal to improve my software. It works better than libpostal in some cases (for eg: USA: Start libpostal: 751 FAiR OKS AVENUE PASADNA CA road => fair oks avenue pasadna state => ca house_number => 751 Geocoder.ca 751 FAiR OKS AVENUE PASADNA CA https://geocoder.ca/?locate=751+FAiR+OKS+AVENUE+++PASADNA+CA&geoit=x https://geocoder.ca/?locate=751+FAiR+OKS+AVENUE+++PASADNA+CA... stnumber: 751 staddress: N Fair Oaks Ave city: Pasadena prov: CA postal: 91103-3069 libpostal from Little Plate Shop 9 11 Deodar Drive Burliegh Heads QLD 4220 house => LITTLE PLATE SHOP city => HEADS postcode => 4220 road => DEODAR DRIVE BURLIEGH state => QLD house_number => 9 11 Geocode.xyz Little Plate Shop 9 11 Deodar Drive Burliegh Heads QLD 4220 addresst: DEODAR DR region: QLD postal: 4220 stnumber: 11 prov: AU city: BURLEIGH HEADS countryname: Australia confidence: 0.7 And it works worse in some other cases... Anyways, good luck to this developer. I don't think anyone will ever produce a solution that works better than all others, but it is better if more of us try.

microcolonel 8y ago
I think that there is a good solution: supervised learning/segmentation with direct user verification. You have the user enter a free form address, and then translate it into a structured address. If they correct any fields, you look at those and try to figure out if the final result is correct or not, and integrate that. Maybe this could be done as a service with iframes (like ReCaptcha); and since the information in a full address is basically entirely public knowledge (at least in the U.S.), you can keep all of it around in full detail.

by eruci 8y ago

microcolonel 8y ago

I think that there is a good solution: supervised learning/segmentation with direct user verification. You have the user enter a free form address, and then translate it into a structured address. If they correct any fields, you look at those and try to figure out if the final result is correct or not, and integrate that. Maybe this could be done as a service with iframes (like ReCaptcha); and since the information in a full address is basically entirely public knowledge (at least in the U.S.), you can keep all of it around in full detail.