dianashk / node-postal Goto Github PK

These are the NodeJS bindings to https://github.com/openvenues/libpostal, a fast, multilingual NLP library for parsing/normalizing physical addresses. libpostal is written in C because virtually every other language can bind to C.

We're supporting official NodeJS mostly because Pelias (https://github.com/pelias), Mapzen's geocoder, is written in Node, but also because it's an awesome, ubiquitous language that's immensely popular among folks in the geo world.

Before using the Node bindings, you must install libpostal first. Make sure you have the following prerequisites:

On Linux (Ubuntu)

sudo apt-get install libsnappy-dev autoconf automake libtool

On Mac OSX

sudo brew install snappy autoconf automake libtool

Installing libpostal

git clone https://github.com/openvenues/libpostal
cd libpostal
./bootstrap.sh
./configure --datadir=[...some dir with a few GB of space...]
make
sudo make install

# On Linux it's probably a good idea to run
sudo ldconfig

Installing node-gyp on Linux (Ubuntu)

First make sure you have:

1. gcc, g++ and make (sudo apt-get install build-essential on Ubuntu)
2. NodeJS with all the development headers (if using a package manager like apt-get, follow the instructions here: https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/)
3. python 2.7

Then install node-gyp system-wide:

sudo npm install -g node-gyp

Installing the Node bindings

npm install openvenues/node-postal

var postal = require('node-postal');

// Expansion API
postal.expand.expand_address('V XX Settembre, 20', {languages: ['it']})

// Parser API
postal.parser.parse_address('Mayfield 688 Franklin Ave, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NY 11238')

The C++ bindings are written using Nan (https://github.com/nodejs/nan), which abstracts many of the API changes across versions of V8. That should keep node-postal compatible

If you're having trouble compiling, post a Github issue with your OS and Node versions along with the output of npm install / node-gyp rebuild.

To run the unit tests:

npm test

Lucas Hrabovsky (https://github.com/imlucas) for information and examples of repos using Nan, node-gyp, etc.