Validate an Address¶

HTTP Request¶

POST /v1/addresses/verify

Summary¶

Address validation verifies and cleanses postal addresses within the United States to help ensure packages are rated accurately and shipments arrive at their final destinations on time. The Validate Address operation sends an address to be verified. The response indicates whether the address is valid and whether the validation check made changes to the address.

Considerations¶

Only U.S. domestic addresses are validated using this POST operation at this time.
Pitney Bowes verifies addresses for accuracy against current USPS data and makes corrections to delivery lines and last lines when possible. You can optionally limit the extent of corrections by enabling minimal address validation through the minimalAddressValidation query parameter.

For a comparison of complete and minimal address validation, please see What is minimal address validation?
The following Address Object fields are required:
- addressLines
- postalCode
- countryCode
If validation fails, you can use the Suggest Addresses API call to provide suggestions that could result in the address passing verification in a subsequent Address Validation API call.

Request URLs¶

Sandbox: https://shipping-api-sandbox.pitneybowes.com/shippingservices/v1/addresses/verify
Production: https://shipping-api.pitneybowes.com/shippingservices/v1/addresses/verify

Query Parameter¶

The query parameter is optional.

Important: The parameter is case-sensitive.

Name

Description

minimalAddressValidation

When set to true, the complete address (delivery line and last line) is validated but only the last line (city, state, and postal code) would be changed by the validation check.

Important: If any part of the address, including the delivery line, is marked “Undeliverable” according to USPS data, address validation returns an error.

Valid values:

true
false

Request Headers¶

Name	Description
Authorization	Required. OAuth token generated using the Generate an OAuth Token API.
Content-Type	Required. The media type of the request entity. Set this to `application/json`.
Accept-Language	Language and country code. Default: `en-US`
X-PB-UnifiedErrorStructure	Recommended. Set this to `true` to use the standard error object if an error occurs.

Request / Response Elements¶

The API call sends and receives an Address Object. The following table describes all possible fields in an Address Object. Some fields might not apply to this operation and are marked accordingly.

Important

For the required fields, see the Considerations above.

Name	Data Type	Description
addressLines	Array[String]	Street address or P.O. Box. Include apartment number, if applicable. You can specify up to 3 address lines. For USPS^® domestic shipments: ensure that the street address is specified as the last of the 3 address lines. This way, the street address is printed right above the city, state, and postal code, per USPS label guidelines. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
cityTown	String	The city or town. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
stateProvince	String	The state or province. For a US or Canadian address, use the 2-letter state or province code. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
postalCode	String	The postal code or ZIP code. For US addresses, use either the 5-digit or 9-digit ZIP code in one of the following formats: `12345` `12345-6789` If you use a different format, such as `12345-` or `123451234`, you will receive an error. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
countryCode	String	Two-character country code from the ISO country list. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
company	String	The name of the company. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
name	String	The first and last name. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
phone	String	The phone number. Enter the digits with or without spaces or hyphens. When used for Pickups, the maximum is 10 digits. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
email	String	The email address. Required if specified in Considerations on the API documentation page.
residential	Boolean	Indicates whether this is a residential address. Pitney Bowes recommends including this parameter to improve address verification. Required for APAC Services.
deliveryPoint	String	The 2-digit USPS domestic delivery point, when available.
carrierRoute	String	The last four characters of the USPS domestic carrier route code. The carrier route is the area served by a particular USPS mail carrier. The full carrier route code is a nine-character string comprising the five-digit postal code appended by these four characters.
taxId	String	Pickup Request Only. Tax identification number. This is optional for pickup requests.
status	String	RESPONSE ONLY. This field applies to the Validate Address and Suggest Addresses APIs. The field indicates whether the submitted address is valid and whether the API made changes to the address. Possible values are: `VALIDATED_CHANGED`: The address is valid, but the API made changes to improve the address. For example, if an address has a valid street number and street name (e.g. “100 Elm”) but is missing the street suffix (e.g. “St”), the API would add the suffix. `VALIDATED_AND_NOT_CHANGED`: The address is valid. The API made no changes. `NOT_CHANGED`: The address could not be validated. The API made no changes.

Sample Request¶

curl -X POST .../v1/addresses/verify?minimalAddressValidation=false \
-H "Authorization: Bearer <oauth_token>" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-PB-UnifiedErrorStructure: true" \
-d '
{
    "addressLines": [
        "27 Waterview Drive",
        "",
        ""
    ],
    "cityTown": "Shelton",
    "stateProvince": "CT",
    "postalCode": "06484",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "company": "Pitney Bowes Inc.",
    "name": "John Smith",
    "phone": "203-000-0000",
    "email": "john@example.com",
    "residential": false
}'

Sample Response¶

{
    "addressLines": [
        "27 Waterview Dr"
    ],
    "cityTown": "Shelton",
    "stateProvince": "CT",
    "postalCode": "06484-4361",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "company": "Pitney Bowes Inc.",
    "name": "John Smith",
    "phone": "203-000-0000",
    "email": "john@example.com",
    "residential": false,
    "deliveryPoint": "27",
    "carrierRoute": "C010",
    "status": "VALIDATED_CHANGED"
}

Error Codes¶

Error codes specific to address validation are seven-digits long and start with 10. See the address-specific errors in 10-Prefix Error Codes.

For a list of all error codes returned by the Ecommerce APIs, please see Error Codes.