Address Parsing: Explanation & Overview

An international address parser divides an addressed string into its component parts. This process models free-form addresses as structured ones, making them easier to compare, verify, check, de-duplicate and standardize.

Unlike numbers, which can be easily split into digits and letters, there is no universal format for an address. This means that an address can be entered in a different order by each person entering it into your website, app, or marketplace. It can be entered with various punctuation marks (such as commas, full stops, brackets, etc.), or with different abbreviations (such as apt, batiment, and so on).

As a result, human error can make address parsing extremely complicated. Parsing can also be impacted by different regions and countries, as addresses are typically set in a specific format defined by a local authority or government body.

There are 2 approaches to parsing an address: requesting the address from your user or customer as components with a field for each value, and using a regular expression to split meta-symbols and symbols into their component parts. The former can be efficient, but it doesn’t always provide the best user experience. The latter can be more effective, but it requires extensive programming skills and may fail when the regular expression fails to detect certain edge cases.

Ultimately, the most reliable approach to address parsing is using an online or API-based address validation tool that can multitask by parsing, standardizing, and validating all at once. This helps to improve the clarity and accuracy of the data while checking if an address exists in real life, reducing costly mistakes such as undelivered or lost items.