Shipping Module - doesnt support UK postcodes

[widgetuk]

Hi all, I've been having a chat with Bagi about this problem, and he's explained to me that there's an inherent problem with UK postcodes, in that they use letters aswell as numbers in the 'zipcode', eg. M1 1AA. After much debate, we couldnt find a solution, so I thought I'd throw the idea open to the forum, for any other ideas people may have...

Basically, the Standard Shipping module in Boss Cart JV does not support UK postcodes. As such, one cannot offer different postal rates based on post code, but only based on weight for UK shipments.

Apparently it would be very difficult (perhaps impossible?) to make the Standard Shipping module support UK postcodes because of the Letters in the code - php logical operator can only compare numbers, not letters.

So I wondered, does anyone have any experience of any other shopping cart that does support UK postcodes? And if so, can we learn anything from that to either modify the current Boss Cart JV shipping module, or, add a new module for us poor people in the UK who have alphanumeric postcodes and not numeric. ?!?!?

I'd be interested to hear any ideas people have on this, because, after all, some couriers in the UK actually charge more for shipments to certain remote postcodes, so, it would be essential for anyone selling to UK people to have this facility built-in to their shipping section of their ecommerce enabled site.

Cheers, Jon

[Bagi Zoltán]

I was thinking on this problem a little in the past minutes and i have an idea. So it is based on a php function which would transform the zip string into numbers. For instance if the input is abcd the output would be 1234 this way. This way they can be compared, but as i see the UK zip codes have different length. I will try to find out something, which will work.

[widgetuk]

Sounds like some sort of idea yes. I suppose it would need to be defined as to how exactly the administrator of the cart would like this to work.

eg. Should there be a free text box where the administrator could list full UK postcodes separated by ";" for example

m1 1aa; m1 1ab; m1 1ac; m1 2a;

Or would this be too times consuming supposing the admiministrator needed to have postcodes from several ranges... for instance if he wanted all postcode regions beginning with "m1 1". So it would be ideal if the script were smart enough to know a range of postcodes from a single postcode, for example:

m1 1; m2 2; m3 3bw

Where the first two entries are ranges, but the final one is a specific code.

Not sure if this would work with Bagi's suggestion to convert to numbers?

Something else I thought of, which might be easier? Is why not move away from the zipcode and take it to the town/city level. So have the shipping variable to be based upon town/city entered in the postal address as opposed to postcode? If the the city in the shipping address matches that entered in the shipping module, then it's selected as a valid shipping method. For example;

chesterfield; sheffield;

This could be slightly better, because obviously towns cover large areas and ranges of postcodes. So it gets around the problem if the above method of postcode ranges doesnt work?!

Hmm lots of things to consider I guess.

[Bagi Zoltán]

Yesterday before falling asleep i think i figured out the best way of comparing the zip code with specific ranges. I think that the other suggestion about the cities could be better. As i can estimate my current tasks i would say that the solution will be ready in 2 weeks.
Thank you

[widgetuk]

Bagi, the more i thought about it last night the more i started to think perhaps cities would be simpler too. It's not obviously anywhere near as accurate (because postcodes go down to the sub-street level), but, it would at least give administrators some ability to charge for varied UK postage for different geographical areas. To avoid typing mistakes from the user confusing the script, the town/city in the billing and shipping forms could be a drop-down selection box of all UK town/cities maybe?

[Bagi Zoltán]

The problem of the cities is the typo mistakes. If somebody could not write the name of the city correctly there will be problem when time come to calculate the shipping price. I still did not have time to map the patterns of the UK zip codes, but i will do it soon. At least i hope

[widgetuk]

Bagi, I figured that the city could be a drop-down selection box. This means the users cannot possibly type it incorrectly

[Bagi Zoltán]

I see, but JV script is used worldwide so if i substitute the input form labelled as city with a select object lising all of the UK towns the script can not be used in Australia for instance. Of course the script can be customized in accordance your need, if you have the willingness to compile a list of every UK town i will help you implement the select drop down box.

[craftyclicks]

Originally Posted by Bagi Zoltán

I see, but JV script is used worldwide so if i substitute the input form labelled as city with a select object lising all of the UK towns the script can not be used in Australia for instance. Of course the script can be customized in accordance your need, if you have the willingness to compile a list of every UK town i will help you implement the select drop down box.

Hi, this thread is a bit old, but this info might still be helpful.

A free database of all UK postal towns and traditional county names - Association of British Counties. There was one or two towns missing, I have a corrected list (I'm not sure if the one on ABC site has been fixed yet). Drop me an email if interested. We used this list as one of the data sources while compiling our address lookup webservice, so I can confirm that it is good and has been cross-checked against the Royal Mail PAF database.

Also there are a number of companies that supply detailed postcode and address data for a modest fee (ours included).... but that would be blowing our horn a bit too much ;-)

Adam.