In Ireland Eircodes are relatively new, being launched around 10 years ago, but only very recently many people, mainly businesses - only give out an eircode as I found out on a recent trip. When I entered the eircode into CoMaps it can't find anything, no option for 'route to' etc.

So what I have had to do at least three times while I was over there (only for two days) was look up g~~00~~gle maps online, and then copy the coordinates into CoMaps. I found that the easiest/fastest way, but I can only imagine if I had been there for longer - which I will be soon, - I would have a never ending pain in my neck having to do that every single time.

TIA.

EDIT - Would this be any good? https://github.com/hmleal/irish-eircode-dataset (I don't think there is anything there).

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[–] Supercrunchy@programming.dev 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Eircodes identify not only an address, but are more detailed, going down to identifying even a single apartment in an apartment complex, so I'm not sure if there's a searchable field for that in open street maps (one map feature should be associated with multiple eircodes). I'm a beginner in OSM editing, so maybe some more expert mappers can help you with that.

Generally, I think they'll be quite difficult to add to everything, especially because the official website ( https://www.eircode.ie/ ) has a limit of 15 searches per day, after which you need to have some commercial contract to become a partner and get the whole dataset instead ($$$). It's really something that should have been handled by the government as a public service, but as usual it got privatized by a company. There's also no consistent numbering between neighbors, so you can't really guess their eircode without looking it up (for each house/apartment...).

It would be amazing if people started adding them in OSM, but I think it'd be pretty hard to manually map a lot of them with all those those limitations...

[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Added this to the main post. Could this be used for adding many?

https://github.com/hmleal/irish-eircode-dataset

EDIT - Nothing there. I think.

[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I was wondering if there was a way to download a database with them all in it or something. When I am in my Aunties for example and helping her getting something delivered, the autofill on almost every website is done by the eircode. So there might be a database somewhere somewhere.

I didn't realise it was a private company, but a quick search shows Fine Gael did what they do.

I see that somebody else has asked 8 years ago, about getting the database. - https://data.gov.ie/dataset/suggest/40acc585-4ca5-4b4f-9332-f2d954c935ab

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hadn’t heard of Eircodes until today. I knew that Ireland didn’t have postcodes except for a handful of districts in Dublin, which seemed like the sort of detail that makes it sound like a not entirely real place.

Is the initial letter of an Eircode a mnemonic for the place the code is in, in the way that British postcodes are (i.e. UK postcodes starting with G are in Glasgow and such), or is it arbitrary, as in Canada’s similar alphanumeric system?

[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Is the initial letter of an Eircode a mnemonic for the place the code is in, in the way that British postcodes are (i.e. UK postcodes starting with G are in Glasgow and such), or is it arbitrary, as in Canada’s similar alphanumeric system?

No.

From this site (I had written something, but that site explains it much better).

An Eircode is made up of seven characters, for example D04 K7X4. The first three characters are the 'Routing Key' which can be shared by several towns and townlands.

Except for Dublin postal districts, the letters are not linked to a town or city name. The second part of the Eircode is the 'Unique Identifier' and is four characters long.

Eircodes are not sequential; if your neighbour is D04 K7X4 you won’t be D04 K7X5. This is to avoid the situation where a new building is created between two existing ones, and the code sequence would be broken, requiring all Eircodes in the area to be changed.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

https://www.eircode.ie/files/eircode-pricing-information.pdf

Not to get political but fuck this crowd and fine gael for giving it to them. This system existed in the backend of courier services already and was offered to the state.

You would need to buy the address file subscription and then add the address data datset to allow for coordinates which is only done on a usage tariff.

[–] Babalugats@feddit.uk 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How the f**k does that work? Do they own it forever, or does the licence come up for renewing?

More annoying, if you don't use the eircode on systems that have bought it, they can't find the address.

My aunt has an account with Alibaba from around 2009/10.

Recently (March) she asked me to put in an order. I did. The items went missing and then were tracked to Germany where the courier "couldn't" move forward without an eircode.. Couldn't change the eircode from my instructions, has to be done by the sender. The items arrived last week.

Her address had never included the eircode before, and items always found their way to her house.

So now, the eircode has to be used it seems, but fuck allowing access to it without paying, because it is in private hands.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

It happens because we dont care here.

It should all be available publicly for everyone, I work for a huge company with sites everywhere and I can't get a list of those sites eircodes. I also can search them as it always says I am out of searches presumably because the company VPN means one person gets to use the few searches allowed.