libpypostal

Python bindings for libpostal, an open-source address parsing library.

Why another Python library for libpostal?

There are currently two Python packages available on PyPI that provide bindings for the libpostal C library.

1. pypostal (official)
2. pylibpostal (fork of pypostal)

Due to lack of development in either project for a number of years, here is yet another (non-forked) Python package to address some challenges in usability.

Note that this package reuses the C extension code to avoid reinventing the wheel with some minor changes (e.g. remove Python 2 support). The Python API has also changed slightly in some cases for usability purposes as well.

Installation

If a wheel is not available for your architecture and/or Python version, you need to first install libpostal.

pip install libpypostal

Usage

Libpostal data configuration

Required to use the library. Use the following utility to download the data.

NOTE: This function will also automatically set the LIBPOSTAL_DATA_DIR to the output directory specified.

from libpypostal import data_utils

output_dir = "/tmp/libpostal_data_dir"
data_utils.download_libpostal_data(output_dir)

Alternatively, if you have already downloaded the data, you only need to run:

from libpypostal import data_utils

output_dir = "/tmp/libpostal_data_dir"
data_utils.set_data_dir_env_var(output_dir)

Address parser

from libpypostal import parser

parser.parse_address("123 Main St, Somewhere, DC 00000", merge_multiple_matches=True)

Versioning

Each release of libpypostal depends on a specific version of libpostal when building wheels to release.

The version used to build the Python wheels for a given release can be found as follows:

from libpypostal import version

version.LIBPOSTAL_VERSION