uk postcode

[warid7840288]

hi

 

i am developing a car web and want to make an advance search.

 

everything is ok but one problem that how to search the car against the postcode and how much miles away from that postcode same like http://www.fish4.co.uk/iad/cars

 

thanks in advance

 

[redbullmarky]

you need to look for 2 things:

 

1, a UK postcode database which also holds the longitude/latitude of the postcode. Getting a database with a full collection of the first part of the postcode (ie, B27) is a pretty straightforward google search. If you want the full postcode (ie, SE1 4XU) then you may have to do a bit more digging or pay for it (if you find it via the former, let me know )

 

2, another google search that converts 2 longitude/latitude pairs to a straight line distance. again, there are many different implementations but finding one shouldnt be too tricky.

 

Then it's simply a case of storing the location of each car and making the calcs as you go.

[b83s]

You could try to get a 4 digit zipcode from googlemaps or yahoo maps and translate that to latitude longitude coordinates. After you stored that in your database you can search on distance.

 

Hope this link will get you futher:

http://ben.milleare.com/2006/09/03/calculating-distance-with-latitude-and-longitude/

 

[redbullmarky]

and here's a postcode resource I mentioned, which gives longitude/latitude for the first part of the postcode.

 

http://www.jibble.org/ukpostcodes/

edit: you might find some good references here too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_postcodes#References

 

edit 2: this one seems to do the lot: http://www.pjenkins.co.uk/blog/index.php/2007/04/04/uk_post_code_distance_calculation/

 

b83s, from my experience, both google and yahoo have rubbish support for UK postcodes, but the link you provided is a good one