V2 Legacy HTTP/XML Web Service offers a simple way to interact with our postcode address lookup service. A simple web request URL returns XML which can be read by almost any programming language. This service provides up to date Royal Mail address information, that is updated daily.
This data source can be used by any web server or programming language that supports a server-side scripting language that can parse JSON data, to provide Postcode Software Lookup and Nearest Store locator within your software/Web site.
The service is available across a simple HTTP protocol. Each request is a standard HTTP GET request with the query string forming the request parameters, and returns the address Lookup information as XML data feed.
V3 Open API: has replaced this V2 Legacy HTTP/XML Web Service - For web/desktop applications, we have an Open API web service that takes a Postcode, Postcode + Part of address, or “Search as you type” words and returns a list of matching addresses, which can be used by almost any programming stack.
The user then selects an address from the list presented, and another call is made to the Open API to get the detailed address record and its geolocation. More info about Open API
The service is available across a simple HTTP protocol. Each request is a standard HTTP GET request with the query string forming the request parameters, and returns the address Lookup information as XML.
The HTTP/XML Web Service has the following features:
HTTPExample.exe can be found in the root of the example download code. This demonstrates the HTTP requests in action.
Turning on “Show calls in detail to Demonstrate HTTP/XML Data” will show the URLs called and the XML returned by calls HTTP calls. This should help programmers of other languages understand the HTTP calls and returns data.
The HTTP/XML examples:
see below for list of examples