Great Britain (GBR)

This section defines the supported geocoding datasets, operations, and input and output field information for Great Britain.

Supported Geocoding Datasets

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

Note: Custom User Dictionaries are supported.
Geocoding Dataset City Centroid Suburb/Village Centroid Postal Centroid Street Centroid Interpolated Street Address Point-level Address Point of Interest
TomTom English Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
The following geocoding dataset(s) are also supported:
  • AddressBase Premium
  • CodePoint

Supported Operations

The following operations are supported for Great Britain:
  • Geocoding—Takes one or more addresses as input and returns latitude/longitude coordinates and other information.
  • Reverse Geocoding—Takes one or more latitude and longitude coordinates as input and returns the address of the location.
  • Interactive Geocoding— Returns potential match candidates as the adddress is typed in.
  • Global Key Lookup—Returns geocode candidates when given a unique key as input. USA MLD and AUS GNAF data only.

Input Fields

Great Britain addresses may contain some or all of the following address elements.

Parameter Type Description
placeName String Specifies the building name, place name, Point of Interest (POI), company or firm name associated with the input address. Optional.
mainAddress String Single Line Input—If no other address field is populated, then the mainAddress entry will be treated as a single line input. Single line input can consist of multiple input address fields ; these should be entered in the typical address order for the country. For more details, refer to the section "Single Line Input" below.

Street Address—If the post address components (city, postalCode, etc.) are provided separately or in the lastLine field, then the contents of mainAddress will be treated as the street address part and can include company name, house number, building names and street names. Optional.

Street Intersection Input—To enter an intersection, specify the two street names separated by a double ampersand (&&).
lastLine String The last line of the address. Optional. For example:

186 City Road
London, EC1V 2NT
areaName1 String Specifies the region.
areaName2 String Not used.
areaName3 String Specifies the city or town. Optional.
areaName4 String Specifies the locality. Optional.
postalCode String In Great Britain, each address is associated with an alphanumeric code up to seven characters in length. Each postcode includes an average of 15 addresses. In some cases, where a customer receives a substantial amount of mail, for example, a business, the postcode pertains to just that one address (a large-user postcode). Optional.
country String The three-letter ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3 country code. For Great Britain, the country code is GBR. Required for forward geocoding.

Address Guidelines for Great Britain

Follow these suggestions to ensure that your input address data is in the best format possible for optimum matching and geocoding. For additional information on British addresses, see the Royal Mail website: http://www.royalmail.com/.

  • Street addresses—If you provide a street address, and either a town and state, or a postcode, you can perform an address geocode. The geocoder will match your full address record against its comprehensive geocoding database. Minor misspellings in street addresses are corrected in the returned candidates.

  • Postal box addresses—The geocoder can match to addresses containing a PO Box. A successful match returns a result code of B2 along with the output format that is standardized according to British address formats. The priority of PO Box matching over streets is set in a Preference in Management Console.

  • Postal code—If you enter the postcode in the LastLine input field, you may use either the full postcode or just the post district as long as other street information or post information is present. If you enter the postcode in the PostalCode input field, you must use the complete postcode. Providing both the town and postcode can produce better results. The geocoder corrects postcode information and adds postcodes if your input does not already include them.
  • Northern Ireland addresses—The AddressBase Premium and CodePoint databases include the same Northern Ireland data, accurate to the postcode centroid level. The AddressPoint and AddressBase Plus databases are supplemented with Northern Ireland postcode data from the Royal Mail source. This Northern Ireland data has postcode centroid (result code S3) precision only. That is the highest level of geocoding accuracy available for Northern Ireland addresses, even with the AddressPoint and AddressBase Plus point database sources.

Single Line Input

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][areaName3][postal_code]

Where:
  • [address_number] is optional.
  • [street_info] consists of the street name, street type and any unit type, unit value or pre- or post-directional information (for example, East, West, etc.).
  • [postal_code] is the postal code.
  • [areaName3] is the city or town.
  • Either [areaName3] or [postal_code] is required.
For best results, put a comma between street information and the lastline (for example, city and postal) information.

Custom Options

The following table lists the unique options for Great Britain. Unless otherwise noted, these options are applicable to both forward and reverse geocoding. For the standard set of options available to all countries and their definitions, see the chapters covering Geocode Service and Reverse Geocode Service.

Option Name Description
USE_ADDRESS_POINT_INTERPOLATION When set to true, enables address point interpolation. Default = false. Supported only in forward geocoding.
Note: The address point interpolation feature requires that you have a point-level geocoding dataset installed.

Output Fields

The following table lists the address fields returned for a candidate located in Great Britain.

Note: The placeName, addressNumber, unitType and unitValue field values are only returned when a geocoding dataset that supports street address interpolation is installed.
Field Name Description
mainAddressLine The street address which may include company name, house number, building names and street names.
addressLastLine The last line of the address.
placeName The building name, place name, Point of Interest (POI), company or firm name associated with the address.
areaName1 The region.
areaName2 Not used.
areaName3 The city or town.
areaName4 The locality.
PBKey A unique address identifier that is returned when an address match is made when geocoding or reverse geocoding against the Great Britain premium AddressBase dataset.
postCode1 The postal code.
postCode2 Not used.
country The three-letter ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3 country code. For Great Britain, the country code is GBR.
addressNumber The address number.
streetName The street or road name.
unitType The unit type such as APT, STE, etc.
unitValue The unit value/number, such as "3B".
customFields There are no custom output fields for Great Britain.