Nominatim/docs/develop/Postcodes.md

# Postcodes in Nominatim

The blog post
[Nominatim and Postcodes](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lonvia/diary/43143)
describes the handling implemented since Nominatim 3.1.

Postcode centroids (aka 'calculated postcodes') are generated by looking at all
postcodes of a country, grouping them and calculating the geometric centroid.
There is currently no logic to deal with extreme outliers (typos or other
mistakes in OSM data). There is also no check if a postcodes adheres to a
country's format, e.g. if Swiss postcodes are 4 digits.


## Regular updating calculated postcodes

The script to rerun the calculation is
`build/utils/update.php --calculate-postcodes`
and runs once per night on nominatim.openstreetmap.org.


## Finding places that share a specific postcode

In the Nominatim database run

```sql
SELECT address->'postcode' as pc,
       osm_type, osm_id, class, type,
       st_x(centroid) as lon, st_y(centroid) as lat
FROM placex
WHERE country_code='fr'
  AND upper(trim (both ' ' from address->'postcode')) = '33210';
```

Alternatively on [Overpass](https://overpass-turbo.eu/) run the following query

```
[out:json][timeout:250];
area["name"="France"]->.boundaryarea;
(
nwr(area.boundaryarea)["addr:postcode"="33210"];
);
out body;
>;
out skel qt;
```