zips

Light, fast, tree-based way to get cities by zipcode and location.

1npm install zips

1const zips = require("zips");

U.S. postal codes only. For now.

zips.getByZipCode(zipcode: string)

If zipcode is found, returns a place object with zipcode, city, state, lat, long. Returns null if zipcode not found.

zips.getByLocation(lat: float, long: float)

Returns the closest place object to the specified coordinates.

Under the hood

zips doesn't load its data until the first time a function is called. The longest loading time I've seen is 100ms. After that, sub-millisecond returns can be expected.

Why?

I saw a lot of zip database modules on npm, but I was displeased with three aspects:

• Old data (zips uses US Postcode data from geonames.org, the most up-to-date I could find).
• Huge, raw data (zips' data is pre-processed so it can just load and go).
• List searching (zips organizes its data into trees instead of going down a list until a match is found or a large hash table).

I hope you're happy too.

Update

1. Download US.zip from GeoNames Postcodes Download Server
2. Extract US.txt to root.
3. npm run update.

Last update: 2023-02-03