This is completely broken anywhere outside the US. I'm thinking the author knows this, but if he acknowledges it, his entire point about it being easy to implement goes away. For it to work internationally, you'd have to first ask for the country, then individually point each answer to a different postal code database, down to the smallest nation, supposing that such a database is even publicly available for every nation on earth.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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The what first?
Postal codes...
I tried their demo. It didn't let me input my postal code because it's 7 characters. It would have been even worse if the field only accepted numbers like the author implies it should. I obviously didn't expect it to auto fill, but the fact that I can't even input my postal code at all is the same annoyance I've had with almost every American service. The fact that there's even a field for "country" in the demo is a joke. If you're going to make your form for the US only, why bother including a country field? If it is international, country goes first, I don't know why that's even a concession at the end of the article, it should be the foundation.
Also the suggestion to auto fill the country based on IP has problems but I would go out on a limb and say most people are not travelling or using a VPN so I'll let this slide.
I kind of agree, but Country, really? They know most services can be used outside the US? A great way would be to choose a country (okay, if the majority of users are from the US it can be preselected), then that country's postal code list is used to fill in the rest of the fields (and as a fallback, you can enter unlosted code and address).
I still remember some asshole American services telling me that "a postal code consists of 5 numbers" (I'm from Europe, and it's 6 everywhere) - this is the result of going crazy on assumptions. Nice and convenient standardized systems can be built, but if you make one for an address on the planet, then start from Country and down, not from "I watched Beverly Hills 90210, this seems to work for me"
it's not 6 everywhere in Europe
Yeah, which is also the explanation why this isn't implementented nearly as often as the author would like.
The folks implementing these address input components probably puke already from just needing different sets of input fields and formats for different countries. If they have to call different APIs with different input and output formats for every country, that increases complexity quite a bit.
They talk about that in the blog
This blog assumes a lot. It's very US centric.
Oh that zip cod
