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Be Hai Nguyen
Be Hai Nguyen

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Python: A simple web API to search for Australian postcodes based on locality aka suburb.

#australian #postcode #api

Using the Flask-RESTX library to implement a simple web API to search for Australian postcodes based on locality aka suburb.

🚀 Full source code and documentation: https://github.com/behai-nguyen/bh_aust_postcode

The web service also implements a CLI which downloads Australian postcodes in JSON format, then extracts locality, state and postcode fields and stores them in a SQLite database file.

There are just a bit more than 18,500 (eighteen thousand five hundred) postcodes. At runtime, they are loaded once into a list property of a singleton class instance. Searches are carried out using this list, that is in memory only.

Searches are always partial: i.e. any locality contains the incoming search text is considered a match. For example, if the incoming search text is spring, then Springfield is a match.

The web API returns the search result as a JSON object.

On successful:

 { "status": { "code": 200, "text": "" }, "data": { "localities": [ { "locality": "ALICE SPRINGS", "state": "NT", "postcode": "0870" }, ... { "locality": "WILLOW SPRINGS", "state": "SA", "postcode": "5434" } ] } }
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Nothing found:

 { "status": { "code": 404, "text": "No localities matched 'xyz'" } }
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Invalid searches:

 { "status": { "code": 400, "text": "'%^& Spring' is invalid. Accept only letters, space, hyphen and single quote characters." } } { "status": { "code": 400, "text": "Must have at least 3 characters: 'Sp'" } }
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In general ['status']['code'] other than HTTPStatus.OK.value signifies search does not return any localities. Always check for ['status']['code'] of HTTPStatus.OK.value before proceeding any further with the result.

🚀 GitHub Read Me should have all necessary documentation on how to get this project to run on your development server, I have tested for both Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.10.

My other post on Flask-RESTX -- Python: Flask-RESTX and the Swagger UI automatic documentation.

Thank you for reading. I do hope someone will find this project useful. Stay safe as always.

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