Key:postal_code - OpenStreetMap Wiki
Key:postal_code
From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Help
Key:postal code
In other languages
Afrikaans
asturianu
azərbaycanca
Bahasa Indonesia
Bahasa Melayu
bosanski
brezhoneg
català
čeština
Crnogorski
dansk
eesti
Esperanto
euskara
Frysk
Gàidhlig
galego
hrvatski
Ido
interlingua
íslenska
italiano
Kreyòl ayisyen
kréyòl gwadloupéyen
kurdî
latviešu
Lëtzebuergesch
lietuvių
magyar
Nederlands
norsk
norsk nynorsk
occitan
polski
português
română
sardu
shqip
slovenčina
slovenščina
srpski (latinica)
suomi
svenska
Tagalog
Tiếng Việt
Türkçe
Zazaki
Ελληνικά
беларуская
български
македонски
монгол
русский
српски / srpski
українська
հայերեն
עברית
العربية
سرائیکی
فارسی
پنجابی
پښتو
नेपाली
मराठी
हिन्दी
বাংলা
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
தமிழ்
മലയാളം
සිංහල
ไทย
မြန်မာဘာသာ
한국어
ქართული
ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ
中文（简体）
中文（繁體）
粵語
Other languages...
postal_code
Description
For tagging postal codes of streets and areas.
Group:
places
Used on these
elements
Status:
in use
postal_code
More details at tag
info
Tools for this tag
taginfo
AD
AT
BE
BR
BY
CH
CN
CZ
DE
DK
FI
FR
GB
GR
HU
IE (N+S)
IN
IR
IT
LI
LU
JP
KP
KR
NL
NO
PL
PT
RU
ES
AR
MX
CO
BO
CL
EC
PY
PE
UY
VE
TW
UA
US
VN
overpass-turbo
QLever
Postpass via overpass-turbo
OSM Tag History
You can tag ways and areas with
postal_code
=*
to describe the postal code of an
area or a street
Contents
Other tagging schemes
Postal code systems
Sources of post code data
3.1
Postcodes from scratch?
3.2
Government sources
3.3
Free the postcode
Example Renderings
External links
Other tagging schemes
The
postal_code
=*
key has been used on
buildings and nodes
too, however the
Karlsruhe Schema
has become more well established (see
addr
=*
). The tag
addr:postcode
=*
should be used in the context of addresses for buildings and nodes.
For
streets
with the same postcode on both sides of the way,
postal_code
=*
is still valid and widely used.
For
boundaries
of a postcode area,
postal_code
=*
is still valid and widely used, but you can also use
boundary
postal_code
on a way or on a
relation
(a relation would also have
type
boundary
).
In some regions,
postal_code
=*
is commonly tagged on post offices (
amenity
post_office
) to indicate the postal codes that the post office serves. For example, a typical post office in the United States has a street address with a ZIP+4 code that is more specific than the signposted ZIP code. The ZIP+4 code goes in
addr:postcode
=*
, while
postal_code
=*
can be more generic. Moreover, some post offices serve multiple ZIP codes but still only have a single street address.
Some post offices
thus have differing
addr:postcode
=*
and
postal_code
=*
values, but this is not an error.
Postal code systems
Take a look at Wikipedia to read more about the different postal code-systems! (Choose language:
de
en
es
fr
nl
).
( ) = optional
Sources of post code data
In an ideal world a databases of postal codes (and the locations they represent) would be managed by a government organisation, and they would share this freely without charges or restrictive licensing, because of the obvious economic benefits. Sadly this is not the case in most countries, and so we follow the same approach as with all of the other types of geo-data.
We generally collect and build the data from scratch without copying from other sources
. We also avoid using Google Maps to position things, and avoid copying from any other website/source which does so.
Postcodes from scratch?
Postcodes from scratch? Does this mean knocking on people's doors and asking what their postcode is?
Yes... That's the way we build our map. We survey and discover information on-the-ground. Postcodes are particularly tricky because you can't see them. They have poor
verifiability
, which in sense means they are not suitable for OpenStreetMap, but they have always been a type of geodata people were interested in releasing for free.
You can also discover postcodes on an individual basis without knocking on doors, by looking out for them on till receipts, restaurant menus. You can even look them up on the official website of the place. There is a slippery slope to watch out for with that. We don't want to systematically copy lots of postcodes from somebody's database.
Government sources
We
can
use government or other mapping agency sources where they have taken the sensible step of releasing the data openly, however "use" of such data might be thought about in terms of an
import
, i.e. converting the data and using it to set
postal_code
=*
tags in an automated way in the OpenStreetMap database.
Imports
require that we are very sure about the compatibility of the license and various other caveats.
Import guidelines
must be followed. A good alternative might be to devise ways of combining datasets while keeping them separate. For many end uses this can work well, although it will mean that some OpenStreetMap benefits such as
Nominatim
search matching will not come to pass.
Free the postcode
There is a separate but related project called
Free The Postcode
which coordinates such efforts as a more focused database. When you add a postal_code tag to a node in OpenStreetMap, it does not automatically get added to Free The Postcode. Free the postcode has seen less activity and interest in recent times. There was always a UK focus, but in the UK the postcode situation has changed with the release of CodePoint (See
Free The Postcode#UK
for details) Free the postcode may still be useful and relevant elsewhere though.
Example Renderings
These examples show data where mappers have followed the approach of adding this
postal_code
=*
onto every street.
Birmingham
, UK
Hamburg
, Germany
External links
Map of postal codes in United Kingdom
Retrieved from "
Categories
Key descriptions for group "places"
Key descriptions
Key descriptions with status "in use"
Places
Postal codes
Hidden categories:
Pages unavailable in Spanish
Pages unavailable in French
Pages unavailable in Italian
Pages unavailable in Dutch
Item with no description in language ES
Item with no description in language FR
Item with no description in language IT
Item with no description in language FI
Item with no description in language NL
Item with no description in language HU
Item with no description in language ZH-HANS
Item with no description in language ZH-HANT
Navigation menu
US