addressing

A PHP 5.4+ addressing library, powered by Google's dataset.

Stores and manipulates postal addresses, meant to identify a precise recipient location for shipping or billing purposes.

Features:

• Address formats for 200 countries
• Subdivisions (administrative areas, localities, dependent localities) for 40 countries
• Subdivision translations for all of the parent country's (i.e Canada, Switzerland) official languages.
• Validation (via Symfony Validator)
• Form generation (via Symfony Form)
• Postal formatting

The dataset is stored locally in JSON format, generated from Google's Address Data Service.

The backstory can be found in this blog post.

Address object

The address object represents a postal adddress, and has the following fields:

• Country
• Administrative area
• Locality (City)
• Dependent Locality
• Postal code
• Sorting code
• Address line 1
• Address line 2
• Organization
• Recipient

Field names follow the OASIS eXtensible Address Language (xAL) standard.

The CLDR country list is used (via commerceguys/intl), because it includes additional countries for addressing purposes, such as Canary Islands (IC).

Address metadata

The address format object contains the following data for a country:

• Which fields are used, and in which order
• Which fields are required
• Which fields need to be uppercased for the actual mailing (to facilitate automated sorting of mail)
• The labels for the administrative area (state, province, parish, etc.), and the postal code (postal code or ZIP code)
• The regular expression pattern for validating postal codes

The subdivision object contains the following data:

• The subdivision code (used to represent the subdivison on a parcel/envelope, i.e CA for California)
• The subdivison name (shown to the user in a dropdown)
• The postal code prefix (used to ensure that a postal code begins with the expected characters)

Subdivisions are hierarchical and can have up to three levels: Administrative Area -> Locality -> Dependent Locality.

use CommerceGuys\Addressing\Metadata\AddressMetadataRepository;

$repository = new AddressMetadataRepository();

// Get the address format for Brazil.
$addressFormat = $repository->getAddressFormat('BR');

// Get the subdivisions for Brazil.
$states = $repository->getSubdivisions('BR');
foreach ($states as $state) {
    $municipalities = $state->getChildren();
}

// Get the subdivisions for Canada, in French.
$states = $repository->getSubdivisions('CA', 0, 'fr');
foreach ($states as $state) {
    echo $state->getName();
}

Postal formatter

The address is formatted according to the destination country format. If the parcel is being sent to a different country, the country name is appended in the local language (so that the local post office can understand it).

If a country (i.e China/Japan/Korea) uses both major-to-minor (country first) and minor-to-major (recipient first) address formats, the right one is selected based on the origin address. For example, if the parcel is being sent from China to China, the local major-to-minor format is used. But if the parcel is being sent from France to China, then the minor-to-major format is used, increasing the chances of the address being interpreted correctly.

use CommerceGuys\Addressing\Formatter\PostalFormatter;
use CommerceGuys\Addressing\Metadata\AddressMetadataRepository;

$repository = new AddressMetadataRepository();
$formatter = new PostalFormatter($repository);

// Format an address for sending from Switzerland, in French.
// If the address destination is not Switzerland, the country name will be
// appended in French, uppercase.
echo $formatter->format($address, 'CH', 'fr');

Validator

Address validation relies on the Symfony Validator library.

Checks performed:

• Country code is valid.
• All required fields are filled in.
• All fields unused by the country's format are empty.
• All subdivisions are valid (values matched against predefined subdivisions).
• The postal code is valid (country and subdivision-level patterns).