t: +44 (0)191 305 5035  e: info@unifiedsoftware.co.uk 

AddressVal ™

Important note.

AddressVal™ is available on both main and backup servers at our primary and secondary data centres.

In general:

• Call the service at the primary data centre at www.unifiedsoftware.co.uk
• In the unlikely event of a failure, call the service at the secondary data centre at www.unifiedservices.co.uk

1 AddressVal™ - REST implementation

AddressVal™ functionality:

• Given a partial address comprising of premise number/name and postcode, AddressVal™ will return one or more address matches from the Royal Mail PAF database.
• If AddressVal™ is able to find an exact match on the database, a single result is returned to the user, containing full address details.
• If an exact match cannot be found, AddressVal™ will return a number of possible matches, from which the user may make a selection. Each returned match will comprise of the full UK postal address.

Follow these three steps:-

• 1. Attempt to access the service on unifiedsoftware.co.uk
• 2. Check the http response code
• 3. If this is < 200 or > 399, access the backup service on unifiedservices.co.uk

URI for AddressVal™

• GET http://www.unifiedsoftware.co.uk/services/addrval/address/userid/‹userid›/pin/‹pin›/premise/‹premise›/
  postcode/‹postcode›/‹format›/

where:

• ‹userid› and ‹pin› are your user ID and 5 digit PIN obtained upon request from: sales@unifiedsoftware.co.uk
• ‹premise› is the property name or number.
• ‹postcode› is the property postcode.
• ‹format› specifies the format of the returned data. Valid formats are csv, xml and json.

• Please note that if you wish to use a parameter which includes a special character such as a space, this will need to be ‘escaped’, i.e. replaced with a code which is valid within a URI
• For example, if premise is ‘Rose Cottage’, this should be replaced by ‘Rose%20Cottage’ in the URI:
  .../premise/Rose%20Cottage/postcode/ ...
• If the premise name or number is not known, insert the word ‘all’ to receive all matches for a given postcode. Do not leave the premise field blank.

Results

If the postcode is valid:-

• One or more possible matches is returned, each comprising of the full postal address.
• CSV return strings are comma “,” and pipe “|” delimited. Fields within an address are separated by commas and whole addresses are separated by pipe characters. It is common for some of the fields to be empty.
• JSON and XML results are prefixed with the term "VALID".

Example Valid Results

If premise and postcode are not valid or if an error occurs:-

• Return field - contains an error message

Error messages :-

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2 AddressVal™ - SOAP implementation

AddressVal™ functionality:

• Given a partial address comprising of premise number/name and postcode, AddressVal™ will return one or more address matches from the Royal Mail PAF database.
• If AddressVal™ is able to find an exact match on the database, a single result is returned to the user, containing full address details.
• If an exact match cannot be found, AddressVal™ will return a number of possible matches, from which the user may make a selection. Each returned match will comprise of the full UK postal address.

Accessing AddressVal™ via SOAP

• The simplest way to access the SOAP service is via its WSDL (Web Service Definition Language) file. This can be used by many SOAP toolkits to generate the client code necessary to consume the web service.
• The WSDL for the main service can be found at: http://www.unifiedsoftware.co.uk/addrval.wsdl
• The backup service WSDL is at: http://www.unifiedservices.co.uk/addrval.wsdl

Parameter Format for AddressVal

ReturnMessage = addresscheck(QueryString)

where

QueryString is a " | " delimited string of the format - "userid|PIN|premise_name_or_number|postcode"

ReturnMessage is string delimited by coma and pipe characters or an error message as shown below.

If ReturnMessage contains valid address/addresses :-

• Fields within an address are separated by commas and whole addresses are separated by pipe characters. It is common for some of the fields to be empty.
• A single address is comprised of the following fields:
  premise, dependent_street, street, double_dependent_locality, dependent_locality, post_town, county (currently empty, may be populated in a future release), postcode

Example Valid Results

If premise and postcode are not valid or if an error occurs:-

• An error message is returned

Error Message

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