Documentation
Get setup and running with Ideal Postcodes
Setup
Ideal Postcodes
To use this plugin you will need a Ideal Postcodes account. You can setup without payment with just an email address and password.
When you've created a new account you will be prompted to create a new API key, which will come with 15 free lookups to test the service. Before you are able to use the service, and your new API key, you will need to authorise your account.
Once you have authorised your account you should see a confirmation screen (as shown below).
Rock
Configuring your Rock instance to use Ideal Postcodes is easy. There are two simple changes that have to made. Firstly, visit Admin Tools > General Settings > Global Attributes and set the Support International Addresses value to Yes. Secondly, visit Admin Tools > System Settings > Location Services and select Ideal Postcodes and change the service to Active and paste the API key you generated in the previous step into the API Key field. Your API key should begin with the prefix "ak_".
How the Plugin Functions
This location service will pass the values (if any are present) of the address line 1, address line 2, city, state, and postal code fields from Rock to Ideal Postcodes. It will then ask for the best match and if values are present in the response it will replace the values stored in Rock with the response values. The matching is as follows| Rock Field | Ideal Postcodes Data Source |
|---|---|
| Address 1 | Address Line 1 |
| Address 2 | Address Line 2 |
| City | Post Town (as lowercase) |
| State | County |
A Note on Counties
The use of the county address line was deprecated in 1996 and as a result not every request will return a matching county field. For example, 10 Downing Street does not have a county according to PAF data.
Example Address Standardisation
The table below is a selection of random address data from Google Maps standardised using Ideal Postcodes.
| Input Address | Address 1 | Address 2 | City | County | Postcode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Glenree, Alyth, Blairgowrie, Perth and Kinross PH11 8EA, UK | 6 Glenree | Alyth | Blairgowrie | Perthshire | PH11 8EA |
| 63A Bridge Street, Worksop, Nottinghamshire S80 1DG, UK | 63a Bridge Street | Worksop | Nottinghamshire | S80 1DG | |
| South Downs National Park, 12 Fiona Close, Winchester, Hampshire SO23 0HB, UK | 12 Fiona Close | Winchester | Hampshire | SO23 0HB | |
| 48 Acre Lane, Carshalton, Greater London SM5 3AB, UK | 48 Acre Lane | Carshalton | Surrey | SM5 3AB | |
| 4 Upper Achagoyle, Minard, Inveraray, Argyll and Bute PA32 8YF, UK | 4 Upper Achagoyle | Minard | Inveraray | Argyll | PA32 8YF |
Developers
The source code for the Ideal Postcodes Location Service is available here for use with the Rockit SDK
.