AddressData

AddressData is a tool that collects addresses from real cities around the world, along with their latitude and longitude coordinates.

After addresses are collected, they are used to power AddressData.net, a site that displays all known addresses by city, alongside an interactive map.

Currently, AddressData.net contains millions of addresses for over 1,500 cities around the world.

Table of Contents

• Installation
  • Using Visual Studio
    • Requirements
    • How to Run
    • How to Test
• Usage
• Acknowledgments
• Contributing
• License

Installation

Using Visual Studio

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2022
  • With ASP.NET and web development installed from the Visual Studio Installer
• .NET 8 SDK
• Any Operating System

How to Run

1. Open the solution in Visual Studio 2022.
2. Build and launch the AddressData.WebApi project.
3. The API can be accessed at https://localhost:5280.

How to Test

1. Open the solution in Visual Studio 2022.
2. Run the tests in Test Explorer.

Usage

1. Start the Web API: Run the AddressData.WebApi project.
2. Seed the Data:
   • Navigate to https://localhost:5280.
   • Make a POST request to the /documents/seed endpoint.
3. Monitor Output:
   • After a while, you’ll see a newly created folder structure (in your solution’s output directory) containing country and city CSV files with addresses.
   • Note that the full seeding process can take up to 1 day to complete, depending on how many records you are collecting.
   • If you’re in a hurry, you can provide a limit parameter in your POST request to /documents/seed to only generate a smaller subset of data.

Acknowledgments

• Overpass Turbo API:
  Addresses are retrieved from Overpass Turbo—a web-based data mining tool for OpenStreetMap. It provides a powerful query language for extracting location-based data (like street addresses) from the OpenStreetMap database.

• Datasette:
  Datasette is used to display CSV data on a website. It offers a lightweight, flexible way to query and visualize structured data, making it easier to explore and share the address information we collect.

Contributing

Pull requests are accepted.

License

MIT