France (FRA)

This chapter defines the supported Geocode datasets, operations, and input and output field information for France. This chapter also applies to the following countries: French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Monaco and Reunion. Content that references France also pertains to these countries.

Supported Geocode Datasets

The following table lists the supported Geocode dataset(s) with the available geocoding levels for France.

Supported Operations

The following operations are supported for France:

Input Fields

The input address may contain some or all of the following address elements.

Address Guidelines for France

Follow these suggestions to ensure that your input address data is in the best format possible for optimum matching and geocoding. For additional information about the French postal system, see the La Poste website: www.laposte.com.

• Required fields—Addresses must contain either a city or a postal code.
• Virtual town names—Some areas are generally recognized as cities even though they are not truly administrative cities. These areas represent Artificial City Areas, or Virtual Towns. Since these virtual town names are commonly used by the public, they are supported and treated as aliases for any of the encompassed towns. Returned candidates have the correct real town in place of the input virtual town.
  Note: Virtual town names are supported in the TomTom geocoding dataset only.

  Virtual Town Name	Encompassed Real Towns
  Défense (La)	Part of: Nanterre, Puteaux, Courbevoie
  Sophia Antipolis	Part of: Valbonne, Mougins, Vallauris, Antibes, Biot
  Cergy-Pontoise	Menucourt, Courdimanche, Puiseux-Pontoise, Osny, Pontoise, Cergy, Vauréal, Neuville-sur-Oise, Saint-Ouenl'Aumône, Jouy-le-Moutier, Eragny
  Marne-la-Vallée	Bry-sur-Marne, Villiers-sur-Marne, Noisy-le-Grand, Champs-sur-Marne, Emerainville, Noisiel, Lognes, Croissy-Beaubourg, Torcy, Collégien, Ferrières, Bussy- Saint-Georges, Bussy-Saint-Martin, Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes, Gouvernes, Conches, Guermantes, Jossigny, Lagny-sur-Marne, Montévrain, Chanteloup-en-Brie, Serris, Chessy, Coupvray, Magny-le-Hongre, Bailly- Romainvilliers
  Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines	Elancourt, Verrière (La), Trappes, Montigny-le- Bretonneux, Guyancourt, Voisins-le-Bretonneux, Magnyle- Hameau
  Sénart	Tigery, Combs-la-Ville, Lieusaint, Moissy-Cramayel, Saint-Pierre-du-Perray, Savigny-le-Temple, Réau, Nandy, Cesson, Vert-Saint-Denis
  Evry	Evry, Bondoufle, Courcouronnes, Lisses
  Etang de Berre	Fos-sur-Mer, Miramas, Vitrolles, Istres
  Isle-d'Abeau	Four, Isle d’Abeau (L’), Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, Vaulx-le- Milieu, Villefontaine

• Common words and abbreviations—The geocoder handles common abbreviations that are used in French addresses. It supports all the official French street type abbreviations plus a number of unofficial street types to help improve geocoding efficiency. A partial list is:

  Street Type or Name	Abbreviation
  appartement	APP, APT, APPART
  Saint	ST
  Sainte	STE
  rue	r
  Charles de Gaulle	CDG
  Regiment D’Infanterie de Marine	RIMA
  Division Blindée	DB

• Directionals in addresses—Abbreviated street directionals are also handled on input and the returned candidate displays the complete directional.

  N	N.	Nord
  S	S.	Sud
  E	E.	Est
  O	O.	Ouest
  NE	N.E.	Nord-Est
  SE	S.E.	Sud-Est
  NO	N.O.	Nord-Ouest
  SO	S.O.	Sud-Ouest

• Ordinals and numbered street names—Input addresses can include ordinals such as 1er, 2e, 2nd, 2nde, 3e. All subsequent ordinal street names are designated with "e" or "ème". You can also specify numbers in street names or express the numbers as words. For example, the following street names are equivalent and can both be geocoded as part of an input address:

  Rue du 4 septembreRue du quatre septembre

• House numbers with letters—House numbers can include letters, such as 85B Ave des provinces.
• Postal box (BP) addresses—The geocoder can handle Postal Box (Boite Postale) addresses. For the following input address, a match candidate is returned with a result code of S5HPNTSC:

  mainAddress: BP 112 2 Avenue CDGpostalCode: 78150areaName3: Le Chesnay

  Note that in this example, the street name CDG is returned as Charles de Gaulle and the postcode is corrected. The BP itself is not returned.
• CEDEX addresses—The geocoder does not use CEDEX for geocoding but CEDEX will not interfere with geocoding. CEDEX can be entered in mainAddress, areaName3, or PostalCode fields. The CEDEX itself is not returned but the complete postcode is returned. For the following input address, a match candidate is returned with a result code of S5HPNTS--A.

  mainAddress: 17 Rue Louise MichelpostalCode: 92301 CEDEXareaName3: Levallois-Perret

  The postcode is returned but it is not considered to have matched to the postal code (there is no Z in the ninth position of the return code). The CEDEX itself is not returned.
• Military addresses—Military addresses (including typical military address abbreviations) are handled. The first two digits usually represent the department. The digits 00 represent military addresses.
• Monaco addresses—The geocoder handles Monaco addresses. You can specify Monaco (or the MCO or MC country codes) in the areaName1 input field. If you input a Monaco address as France, the geocoder attempts to identify this and returns the Monaco candidate if possible. All Monaco postcodes begin with the number 98.
• Overseas Territories addresses—The geocoder covers several French overseas territories. The geocoder recognizes the unique French territorial ISO codes, and you can use these codes with input addresses. The territories use the French 5 digit postal code system, but each territorial postal code starts with 3 unique digits. The accompanying table summarizes the ISO codes, data vintages, and unique postal codes of the covered French territories.

  Territory Name	ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2	ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3	First 3 Digits of Postal Code
  Guadeloupe	GLP	GP	971
  Martinique	MTQ	MQ	972
  French Guyana	GUF	GF	973
  Réunion	REU	RE	974
  Mayotte	MYT	MY	976

  You can also use the country code for France (FRA or FR). In that case, you can get candidates from France, Monaco, and the territories if that city/town name occurs in either France or in one or more of the territories. However if you explicitly specify MCO or a territorial country code, you will get candidates from the specified country only, and not from France.
• Placename Support for User Dictionaries—If your user dictionary includes placenames, you can geocode these placenames and that information is returned with candidates.
• Additional Fields for Address Range and User Dictionaries—Additional fields can be created and returned for both Address Range and Point user dictionaries. These additional fields can contain any special information associated with an address. You cannot geocode using additional fields, but additional field content is returned with each candidate.

Instead of entering each address component in separate fields, you can enter the entire address in the mainAddress input field with the address elements ordered as follows:

[address_number][street_info][postal_code][area]

For best results, put a comma between the street information and the last address line information.

Custom Options

There are no custom options for France.

The following table lists the options that are unique for France. These custom fields are applicable to the Geocode operation and are optional input parameters.

Parsed Address Output Fields

The following table lists the parsed address fields returned for a candidate located in France.

To return the Parsed Address fields, send the returnAllCandidateInfo preference true in POST request.