I’m looking for a data service that will enable me to confirm whether a given Town exists in a given Country, worldwide.
I have found a provider from whom we can can by the large (4.3m record) data-set but this is going to take time to both procure and also set-up and required SQL database infrastructure to host it. There is also the need for keeping it up to date, requiring ‘regular’ refreshes which will be somewhat infrastructure intensive.
Ideally, I’m looking for an API service where we can either:
check whether the Town exists in a Country
fetch a list of Countries in which the Town exists, and we then check the Country ourselves.
Recommendations, suggestions, alternative approaches etc much appreciated.
many thanks for the suggestion. I’ve had a brief look and the services appear to be for much more complex needs than mine. I’m also looking for other API-based services.
The view in the business here is that validation of address worldwide should be something that most websites are already doing, but having looked at a few, including the Royal Mail parcel service in the UK, it is only the County in the Country where drop-down lists are provided (as with the site used to collect the input data I’m using for the automation) but Town is free-text and usually not mandatory. It’s the County/Region, Postcode and Country that matters most.