By elvis2 on

Hello,

anybody know where to get UK postcodes for gmap & location modules? I can only get USA users to be mapped. Any solutions besides a database of postcodes?

Thanks

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

caprenter’s picture

caprenter commented

My understanding is:

There's a problem with uk postcodes -the information isn't available for free. The Royal Mail sell the information so you can get it that way. (even then there are problems as the lat/lng for a postcodes tends to be at the centre of a rather large square)

In the past I've tried to get past it by getting people to place their own marker on a google map, and then using that data - but you need to be careful with that because that isn't 'free data' either, so you can only use it under certain terms.

There is a campaign:
http://www.freethepostcode.org/

Some other links I found useful:
http://www.isharemaps.com/products/isharemaps_on_demand/demo/batch_geoco...
http://www.jibble.org/ukpostcodes/

and of course the Royal Mail.

It's a tough one I think.

Good luck.

jasontanner’s picture

jasontanner commented

I found an interesting tutorial here: http://www.tomanthony.co.uk/blog/geocoding-uk-postcodes-with-google-map-...
that shows how its possible to use the google maps api to get lon lat info using uk post codes. I guess it should be possible to extend either gmap or the location module to do something similar.