Question

Validating and changing a postcode with PHP...

Asked by: SamDavis

UK postcodes come in the following format...

BH22 8SR
W1 3AB
SO41 3MK
E17 1NJ

However, we gain a lot of data through an external system - and some of the postcodes look like the following

bh228sr
w13ab
SO413mk
e171nj

This causes a few problems with our system, so when echoing the data on one of our PHP based pages, we need to have them in the correct format.  The data needs to be capitalised (easy enough), however also there should be a space inserted three characters from the end!

So for instance... we have

$postcode = 'bh228sr'

How can I use PHP to convert the above into...

$postcode = 'BH22 8SR' ??

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Asked On
2008-01-14 at 06:45:22ID23080764
Tags

PHP

Topics

PHP Scripting Language

,

PHP and Databases

Participating Experts
2
Points
75
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: us111Posted on 2008-01-14 at 07:32:50ID: 20653636

http://lu.php.net/manual/en/function.substr.php

<?php
$postcode = 'bh228sr';
echo substr($postcode, 0,4)." ".substr($postcode, 4,3);
?>

                                              
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by: ingwaPosted on 2008-01-14 at 07:35:34ID: 20653662

Hi, first of all I would uppercase all the letters:
$postcode = "bh228sr";

$postcode = strtoupper($postcode);

then use this function:

function format_post_code($code)
{
    for ($i = strlen($code)-1; $i > 0 ; --$i) {
        if (preg_match('/^\d$/', $code[$i])) {
            return substr($code,0, $i) . " " . substr($code,$i);
        }
    }
    return false;
}

echo format_post_code($postcode);

(Source of function: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/PHP/Q_21241972.html?sfQueryTermInfo=1+format+postcod)

Hope this helps

 

by: us111Posted on 2008-01-14 at 07:52:21ID: 20653797

My code does not work with all postcodes

 

by: us111Posted on 2008-01-14 at 08:01:30ID: 20653882

just one line without preg_match

<?php
$postcode = 'w13ab';
$postcode = strtoupper(substr($postcode,0, strlen($postcode)-3)." ".substr($postcode, -3));
echo $postcode;
?>

                                              
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by: SamDavisPosted on 2008-02-12 at 01:45:25ID: 31421418

This did the job, our new system has been in place now for a month without a hitch using the above code.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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