Nuclear Postal Address

Django models for storing and retrieving postal addresses.

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Overview

Postal Address is a set of models and methods for working with postal addresses.

Requirements

• Python (3.5, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8)
• Django (3.0)

We recommend and only officially support the latest patch release of each Python and Django series.

Installation

For more detailed instructions, view the Readme for the example site included with this package.

pip install nuclear-postaladdress

Then, add address to your INSTALLED_APPS list in settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ... 
    'nuclera_postaladdress',
    # ... 
]

You can either store your Google API key in an environment variable as GOOGLE_API_KEY or you can specify the key in settings.py. If you have an environment variable set it will override what you put in settings.py. For more information, including enabling the Google Places API, refer to the example site.

GOOGLE_API_KEY = 'AIzaSyD--your-google-maps-key-SjQBE'

The Model

The rationale behind the model structure is centered on trying to make it easy to enter addresses that may be poorly defined. The model field included uses Google Maps API v3 (via the nicely done geocomplete jquery plugin) to determine a proper address where possible. However if this isn't possible the raw address is used and the user is responsible for breaking the address down into components.

It's currently assumed any address is represent-able using four components: country, state, locality and street address. In addition, country code, state code and postal code may be stored, if they exist.

There are four Django models used:

  Country
    name
    code

  State
    name
    code
    country -> Country

  Locality
    name
    postal_code
    state -> State

  Address
    raw
    street_number
    route
    locality -> Locality

Address Field

To simplify storage and access of addresses, a subclass of ForeignKey named AddressField has been created. It provides an easy method for setting new addresses.

ON_DELETE behavior of Address Field

By default, if you delete an Address that is related to another object, Django's cascade behavior is used. This means the related object will also be deleted. You may also choose to set null=True when defining an address field to have the address set to Null instead of deleting the related object. For more information and an example, see the readme for the nuclear-postaladdress example_site.

Creation

It can be created using the same optional arguments as a ForeignKey field. For example:

  from address.models import AddressField

  class MyModel(models.Model):
    address1 = AddressField()
    address2 = AddressField(related_name='+', blank=True, null=True)

Setting Values

Values can be set either by assigning an Address object:

  addr = Address(...)
  addr.save()
  obj.address = addr

Or by supplying a dictionary of address components:

  obj.address = {'street_number': '1', 'route': 'Somewhere Ave', ...}

The structure of the address components is as follows:

  {
    'raw': '1 Somewhere Ave, Northcote, VIC 3070, AU',
    'street_number': '1',
    'route': 'Somewhere Ave',
    'locality': 'Northcote',
    'postal_code': '3070',
    'state': 'Victoria',
    'state_code': 'VIC',
    'country': 'Australia',
    'country_code': 'AU'
  }

All except the raw field can be omitted. In addition, a raw address may be set directly:

obj.address = 'Out the back of 1 Somewhere Ave, Northcote, Australia'

Getting Values

When accessed, the address field simply returns an Address object. This way all components may be accessed naturally through the object. For example::

  route = obj.address.route
  state_name = obj.address.locality.state.name

Forms

Included is a form field for simplifying address entry. A Google maps auto-complete is performed in the browser and passed to the view. If the lookup fails the raw entered value is used.

TODO: Talk about this more.

Partial Example

The model:

from address.models import AddressField

class Person(models.Model):
  address = AddressField(on_delete=models.CASCADE)

The form:

from address.forms import AddressField

class PersonForm(forms.Form):
  address = AddressField()

The template:

<head>
{{ form.media }} <!-- needed for JS/GoogleMaps lookup -->
</head>
<body>
  {{ form }}
</body>

Running Nuclear Postaladresses Tests

Nuclear Postaladdress currently has partial form and model test coverage using django.test.TestCase.

To run the current tests:

1. Clone nuclear-postaladdress locally.

2. Navigate to the example site, . /nuclear-postaladdress/example_site

3. Create a virtual environment and install the example site dependencies. For example:

   mkvirtualenv -p python3 nuclear-postaladdresses
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

4. Run ./manage.py test

Important note regarding US Territories

Nuclear Postaladdresses does not currently support the parsing of US territories aka Protectorates such as Guam or Puerto Rico.

Project Status Notes

This library was created by Luke Hodkinson originally focused on Australian addresses.

In 2015 Luke began working to abstract the project so it could handle a wider variety of international addresses.

This became the current dev branch. While good progress was made on this, the branch became stale and releases continued under the current model architecture on master.

The project is currently in open development, read more about the project status in this issue.

If you have questions, bug reports or suggestions please create a New Issue for the project.