quality-lac-data-ref-postcodes 2021.8.1

This is a redistribution of the ONS dataset on Lower Tier Local Authority toUpper Tier Local Authority Lookup packaged for the Quality Lac Data project.Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0

Quality LAC Data Reference - Postcodes

This is a redistribution of the ONS Postcode Directory shaped to be used in the Quality Lac Data project.

This repository contains PyPI and npm distributions of subsets of this dataset as well as the scripts to generate them from source.

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0

Read more about this dataset here:

• https://geoportal.statistidcs.gov.uk/datasets/ons::ons-postcode-directory-august-2021/about

To keep distribution small, only pickled dataframes compatible with pandas 1.0.5 are included. This will hopefully change once we figure out how to do different versions as extras.

As pickle is inherently unsafe, the SHA-512 checksum for each file is included in hashes.txt. This file is signed with this key.

When downloading from PyPI, specify the environment variable QLACREF_PC_KEY to either be the public key itself, or a path to where it can be loaded from. The checksums are then verified and each file checked before unpickling.

Regular updates

When a new postcode distribution is available, download it and add it to the source folder and at the same time delete the existing file from this location. There can only be one file in the source folder at a time.

After updating the postcode sources, run the script found in bin/generate-output-files.py to regenerate the output files for each letter of the alphabet. These end up in the qlacref_postcodes directory.

To sign the postcodes, you need the distribution private key. Run the script bin/sign-files.py to create the signed checksum file.

Commit everything to GitHub. If ready to make a release, make sure to update the version in pyproject.toml, push to GitHub and then create a GitHub release. The GitHub Action will then create the distribution files and upload to PyPI.

Release naming should follow a pseudo-semantic versioning format: <YEAR>.<MONTH>.<PATCH>. Alpha and beta releases can be flagged by appending -alpha.<number> and -beta.<number>.

For example, the August 2021 release is named 2021.8 with the associated tag v2021.8.