Nine digit zip codes

[Richard Gaskin]

James Hurley wrote:

> At the USPS web site (http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/) it is possible by
> entering the street address, the city and the state to obtain the 9
> digit zip code for that address.
>
> This may be naive, but is it possible to do this from within LiveCode
> by script?

Good news:  you can use the post command for that.

Bad news:  the result is HTML, so you'll need to parse out the relevant 
parts.

To test I made a stack with a button and two fields - here's the script 
for the button, using the URL derived from the HTML source of the form 
element in that page:

on mouseUp
   post fld 1 to url "http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/zcl_0_results.jsp"
   set the htmlText of fld 2 to it
end mouseUp

Field 1 contains form element names and values, packaged up in the 
name=value format used by both POST and GET:

visited=1&pagenumber=0&firmname=&address2=620+moulton&address1=&city=los+angeles&state=ca&urbanization=&zip5=90031&submit.x=48&submit.y=8&submit=Find+ZIP+Code


Field 2 will contain the HTML once the request is returned.  Now for the 
tedious parsing to get the parts you want....

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv