MainStreet

Address verification for Ruby and Rails

🌎 Supports international addresses

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem "mainstreet"

MainStreet uses Geocoder for address verification, which has a number of 3rd party services you can use. If you adhere to GDPR, be sure to add the service to your subprocessor list.

With some services, bad street numbers, units, and postal codes may pass verification. For full verification, get an account with SmartyStreets. The free plan supports 250 lookups per month for US addresses, and plans for international addresses start at $7. To use it, set:

ENV["SMARTY_STREETS_AUTH_ID"] = "auth-id"
ENV["SMARTY_STREETS_AUTH_TOKEN"] = "auth-token"

Check an address with:

address = "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC 20500"
verifier = MainStreet::AddressVerifier.new(address)
verifier.success?

If verification fails, get the failure message with:

verifier.failure_message

Get details about the result with:

verifier.result

Get the latitude and longitude with:

verifier.latitude
verifier.longitude

For Active Record models, use:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates_address fields: [:street, :street2, :city, :state, :postal_code]
end

The order should be the same as if you were to write the address out.

For performance, the address is only verified if at least one of the fields changes. Set your own condition with:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates_address if: -> { something_changed? }, ...
end

Geocode the address with:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates_address geocode: true, ...
end

The latitude and longitude fields are used by default. Specify the fields with:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates_address geocode: {latitude: :lat, longitude: :lon}, ...
end

Empty addresses are not verified. To require an address, add your own validation.

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates :street, presence: true
end

With SmartyStreets, you must pass the country for non-US addresses.

MainStreet::AddressVerifier.new(address, country: "France")

Here’s the list of supported countries. You can pass the name, ISO-3, ISO-2, or ISO-N code (like France, FRA, FR, or 250).

For Active Record, use:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates_address country: "France", ...
end

Or use a proc to make it dynamic

class User < ApplicationRecord
  validates_address country: -> { country }, ...
end

You can customize error messages with the i18n gem. In Rails, add to the appropriate config/locales file:

en:
  mainstreet:
    errors:
      messages:
        unconfirmed: Address can't be confirmed
        apt_unconfirmed: Apartment or suite can't be confirmed
        apt_missing: Apartment or suite is missing

We recommend encrypting street information and postal code (at the very least) for user addresses. Lockbox is great for this. Check out this article for more details.

class User < ApplicationRecord
  has_encrypted :street, :postal_code
end

View the changelog

Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:

• Report bugs
• Fix bugs and submit pull requests
• Write, clarify, or fix documentation
• Suggest or add new features

To get started with development:

git clone https://github.com/ankane/mainstreet.git
cd mainstreet
bundle install
bundle exec rake test