# Desperately need an advanced zip code database

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/desperately-need-an-advanced-zip-code-database/121253>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [November 26, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/desperately-need-an-advanced-zip-code-database/121253 "2007-11-26T05:17:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/benjohnson)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/desperately-need-an-advanced-zip-code-database/121253/1 "2007-11-26T05:17:46Z")

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I found a million zip code databases on the internet. I was curious if  
there were other database that have more than just zip codes. I live in  
New York City and there are different areas here, soho, noho, etc. Is  
there a database that draws out these areas with longitude and  
latitudes? Let’s pretend soho is a perfect square, is there a database  
that would contain the longitude and latitudes for these 4 points?

Thanks for your help!

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**Author:** ![benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/benjohnson)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2007, 6:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/desperately-need-an-advanced-zip-code-database/121253/2 "2007-11-26T06:46:07Z")

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On Nov 25, 2007, at 8:17 PM, Ben J. wrote:

> I found a million zip code databases on the internet. I was curious if  
> there were other database that have more than just zip codes. I  
> live in  
> New York City and there are different areas here, soho, noho, etc. Is  
> there a database that draws out these areas with longitude and  
> latitudes? Let’s pretend soho is a perfect square, is there a database  
> that would contain the longitude and latitudes for these 4 points?

You generally need to talk to a geo-services company like ESRI for  
something like that. I don’t recall seeing databases with boundaries  
coordinates (there could be dozens and dozens of coords for a given  
zip code), but I _think_ ESRI can do it, and they probably have a web  
service for it.

[esri.com](http://esri.com), they have a lot of different things so you may need to talk  
to someone to narrow down what you want.

– gw (www.railsdev.ws)

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**Author:** ![benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/benjohnson)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2007, 7:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/desperately-need-an-advanced-zip-code-database/121253/3 "2007-11-26T07:54:31Z")

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Ben J. wrote:

> I found a million zip code databases on the internet. I was curious if  
> there were other database that have more than just zip codes. I live in  
> New York City and there are different areas here, soho, noho, etc. Is  
> there a database that draws out these areas with longitude and  
> latitudes? Let’s pretend soho is a perfect square, is there a database  
> that would contain the longitude and latitudes for these 4 points?
> 
> Thanks for your help!

Depending on what you want to do, please check out GeoKit. It is a rails  
plugin that can do some pretty sweet things such as geocode an address  
automatically into a lat/lon

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**Author:** ![benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/3ec8ea/32.png) [@benjohnson](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/benjohnson)\
**Post date:** [November 26, 2007, 3:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/desperately-need-an-advanced-zip-code-database/121253/4 "2007-11-26T15:05:00Z")

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What about Google Maps?

On Nov 26, 4:54 am, Nathan E. \<rails-mailing-l…@andreas-