***BOGO*** Re: [PHP] Restore Leading Zeros in Zip Codes

[Ashley Sheridan <ash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2008-08-22 at 17:16 -0400, tedd wrote:

> At 12:35 PM -0400 8/22/08, Dan Joseph wrote:
> >  > tedd wrote:
> >
> >  >> Why take them out in the first place? Keep the zip code as a string. After
> >  >> all, not all countries use just numbers.
> >
> >
> >From a recent experience, you should all listen to Tedd's advice.  I
> >inhereited an application when I came to work at my current job where the
> >developer used an INT(11) mysql column type for zipcodes.  Its turned things
> >into a nightmare.  We pulll quotes based off distance and calculate that off
> >zip codes.  First I found that there are some 4 digit zip codes in other
> >counties, and shipping from Ohio to New Jersey quotes were coming up as
> >thousands of miles and thousands of dollars, when they shouldn't have.  Then
> >there was the announcement of expanding into Canada.  Then came digging thru
> >all the code trying to redo how zip codes are happening, and ultimately its
> >lead to a rewrite of the system.
> >
> >Do yourself a favor, and use a string type, fix the ones you have with a
> >sprintf() function and be glad you won't have to suffer in the future.
> >
> >--
> >-Dan Joseph
> 
> Back-side I told the OP to convert to sting, add zeros to the left, 
> and left-trim as necessary.
> 
> There is much more here than what meets the eye with international addresses.
> 
> As a word of caution, don't make anything a number and also open 
> address forms to accept multiple strings for international 
> addressing. There's a big world out there of people who don't conform 
> to what we think is the "standard". Remember, if you speak/write 
> English then you're only 4 percent of the world's population. We're 
> hardly the "standard" for anything.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> tedd
> 
> -- 
> -------
> http://sperling.com  http://ancientstones.com  http://earthstones.com
> 

Not to mention, but of the two major English speaking countries, both
America and England have different address standards. All too often an
American site seems to think that a postcode is the same thing as a zip
code, and then rejects it in a form for being in the wrong format!


Ash
www.ashleysheridan.co.uk