How well has the address matched?

Match Overview

You can get an initial view of how well the address has matched by checking the Result object. Broadly we have three scenarios:

We have a Postcode
We have no address match
We don't have a Postcode, but we have matched some or all of the address

Scenarios 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward, and you can look at the MatchLevel and AddressType objects to determine exactly how well the Scenario 3 addresses matched.

Scenario 1 - We have a Postcode

Result Code	Result Description	Example Address
100	Postcode Appended	Autoaddress, Ground Floor, 89-94 Capel Street, Dublin 1
110	Postcode Validated	Autoaddress, Ground Floor, 89-94 Capel Street, Dublin 1, D01 H0C2
120	Postcode Amended	Gamma, 4 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8, D08 XY01
130	Address Amended To Match Postcode	5 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8, D08 XY00
140	Postcode And Address Amended	5 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8, D0B XY00
150	Postcode Not Validated	New Company Ltd, D08 XY00

Scenario 2 - We have no match

Result Code	Result Description	Example Address
210	Postcode Retired	A75 D266
550	No Address Match	unknownland
600	Foreign Address Detected	White Hart Ln, London, United Kingdom
700	Invalid Address Entered	DO NOT POST

Scenario 3 - We don't have a Postcode

Result Code	Result Description	Example Address
200	Postcode Not Available	Pavilion, The University of Dublin Trinity College, Dublin 2
300	Non Unique Address	Curelaim, Turlough, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
400	Partial Address Match	Middle Earth, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8
500	Incomplete Address Entered	Dunboyne, Co. Meath

Note: In the case of 200 we don't have a postcode as one isn't available for the address, but we have fully matched the address to the Address Point or Organisation.

How do we tell how well the address has matched? Every address that is matched (partially or fully) returns the unique AddressId that it has matched to, the AddressType of that Id, and the address table (MatchLevel) of the Id. The AddressType is one of the detailed list of address types available here. You normally don't need this level of detail, we recommend combining the coarser MatchLevel with some of the AddressType values to get a short, workable list which we'll call MatchSubLevel as shown in the table below (ordered from least to most accurate address match) :

Note: An address point record exists for every unique address within a building. A standard residential property will have one address point. Apartment buildings and multi-unit commercial buildings will have one address point for every unique address within the building. Eircodes are assigned at the address point level.

Match SubLevel	Name	Match Level	Address Types	Example Address
0	No Match	0
13	County	9	3900	Some Town, Meath
11	City	7,8	3800	Some Street, Cork
12	Postal District	7,8	3750	Somewhere, Dublin 15
9	Town	7,8	3700	Some Street, Dunboyne, Meath
8	Village	7,8	3600	Some House, Kinvara, Galway
17	Rural Locality (Townland)	7,8	3400, 1130	Curelaim, Turlough, Castlebar, Mayo
16	Urban Area	7,8	3200, 3350	Some Street, Rathmines, Dublin 6
7	Locality	7,8	All except 1130, 3200, 3350, 3400, 3600, 3700, 3750, 3800	Some Business Ltd, Mountmahon Industrial Estate, Abbeyfeale, Limerick
6	Thoroughfare	6	All	Some House, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8
5	Building Group	5	All	Some Place, Limerick Institute of Technology, Moylish Park, Limerick
4	Building Number	2	All	2 Market Street, Bantry, Co. Cork
3	Building	4	All	Some Business Ltd, Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8
2	Address Point (Eircode)	2	All	Pavilion, The University of Dublin Trinity College, Dublin 2
1	Organization	3	All	Autoaddress, 4 Inns Court, Winetavern Street, Dublin 8

E.g. To test if the address has matched to better than Town Level (MatchSubLevel 1 to 9)
(MatchLevel > 0 AND MatchLevel <= 6) OR (MatchLevel in (7,8) AND AddressType Not In (3700,3750,3800))

Notes on Result Code 500 - Incomplete Address

An address is deemed incomplete if there are no examples of a Postal address in the ECAD that comprise just the entered address. For example, there are no addresses that are just "Dublin 7" or "Dunboyne, Meath", the addresses in ECAD also have a thoroughfare name and house number/name. There are cases where a user will insist that they have given their full address and that nothing else is required. This can happen when a townland or locality in the Postal address is not used locally. Take for example the following address "Borris, Co. Carlow". This will be returned as an Incomplete Address, as according to the Postal addresses in ECAD all addresses ending in "Borris, Co. Carlow" additionally have at least a townland or thoroughfare. If you get a Result code of 500 indicating an Incomplete Address, you may want to alter your response or logic depending on the MatchSubLevel as described in the table above. For example, you may want to provide a different message/address flow if the user has matched to a Village (e.g. Borris) as opposed to a City (e.g. Limerick).