UK Postcode format

[jdurrant]

Hi,
please could someone point me in the right direction:

I have a mod. which looks at the postcode and decides if a customer is entitled to free delivery.

My users are putting their postcodes in the format "po175nd".
The expected (and correct) format for a postcode is "PO17 5ND".
How do I validate the postcode field for new customers so that they enter their postcode in the correct format?

(Please be gental with me: I have some HTML and JavaScript, but not much!).

Many thanks,
James.

[DrByte]

If you only need upper-case, simply convert it:

Conceptually:

$postcode = strtoupper($postcode);

If you want to manually insert the space as the 5th character, you could manipulate it like this:

$postcode = str_replace(array(' ', '-'), '', $postcode);
$postcode = substr($postcode, 0,4,) . ' ' . substr($postcode, 5);

If you're trying to validate the order of letters and numbers etc, you'd need to write more advanced code...

[Andy_GS]

into which file should this place?

is it into the shipping module code?

regards
Andy.

[lat9]

There are actually 3 paths in ZenCart where the customer can enter a postcode:

1) Account creation (/includes/modules/create_account.php)
2) Address change during checkout (/includes/modules/checkout_new_address.php)
3) Changes to the customer's address book (/includes/modules/pages/address_book_process/header.php)

You'd want to apply the changes to each of those files.

Here's a little function that will validate the format of a zipcode for the US, Canada, or Great Britain (it has the side-effect of upper-casing the $postcode value):

function postcode_validate(&$postcode, $country) {
  global $messageStack;

  $formats = array ( 38 => '#(^[ABCEGHJ-NPRSTVXY]\d[ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z] {0,1}\d[ABCEGHJ-NPRSTV-Z]\d$)#i',
                    222 => '#(((^[BEGLMNS][1-9]\d?)|(^W[2-9])|(^(A[BL]|B[ABDHLNRST]|C[ABFHMORTVW]|D[ADEGHLNTY]|E[HNX]|F[KY]|G[LUY]|H[ADGPRSUX]|I[GMPV]|JE|K[ATWY]|L[ADELNSU]|M[EKL]|N[EGNPRW]|O[LX]|P[AEHLOR]|R[GHM]|S[AEGKL-PRSTWY]|T[ADFNQRSW]|UB|W[ADFNRSV]|YO|ZE)\d\d?)|(^W1[A-HJKSTUW0-9])|(((^WC[1-2])|(^EC[1-4])|(^SW1))[ABEHMNPRVWXY]))(\s*)?([0-9][ABD-HJLNP-UW-Z]{2}))$|(^GIR\s?0AA$)#i',
                    223 => '#(^\d{5}$)|(^\d{5}-\d{4}$)#i');

  $error = false;

  if( array_key_exists( $country, $formats) ) {
    $temp = strtoupper( $postcode );
    if( preg_match( $formats[$country], $temp, $matches ) == 0 ) {
      $error = true;
  }

  return $error;

}

[schoolboy]

This is VERY useful to ensure that when customers REGISTER, the postcode field auto-capitalises:

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=441

It also ensures Name Case on other input data.

When installed, people who register will then have their details Name Cased and the postcode capitalised - regardless of whether they use all lower case or all upper case when filling in the fields.

[g1smd]

Unlike other countries (like the US using five digits, for example) UK postcodes are somewhat complex.

In general,
- one or two letters,
- followed by one or two digits OR a digit and a letter
- followed by a space
- followed by a digit and two letters.

Examples:
E1 1AA and E11 1AA - East London
EH1 1AA and EH11 1AA - Edinburgh
EC1 1AA and EC1X 1AA - London Central
and others.

Nice regex code in the long post above!

[lat9]

FWIW, the regex was found on www.regexlib.com.