TotalCheck address validation

About TotalCheck

Sensis’ TotalCheck is a suite of APIs that allows developers to build address validation into any application. TotalCheck is essentially a Web Services API which provides a powerful search into the Australian Postal Address File (PAF) and the White Pages directory.

Businesses use TotalCheck to ensure address data can be entered with minimal effort and ensures it is always correct. A TotalCheck search combines the White Pages address database and the Postal Address File.

TotalCheck is AMAS certified and provides the address DPID (unique address identifier) and Australia Post barcode as part the address search, which can make a business eligible to use PreSort, and save on postage.

Search process

An application integrating with TotalCheck needs to go through three steps:

1. Search for a name, which is either a business name or an individual’s last name. TotalCheck provides the suggestNames API which can be used to provide the 20 best matches to the user.
2. Search for an address. TotalCheck offers a comprehensive suggestAddresses API which applications can use to auto-complete an address search field.
3. Select an address. Once a user picks a suggestion from step #2, the address data is fetched from TotalCheck using the selectAddress API. It’s possible that another selection needs to be offered to the user, for example when the selected address is a block of units.

Integration

To integrate with TotalCheck, about the only prerequisite is that your application can connect to the Internet. If your application is a web application, it’s important to know that due to modern browsers’ cross site scripting (XSS) limitations, an integration cannot be achieved using JavaScript, or client side code only. To get around this limitation, connect to TotalCheck from the server-side, or setup a proxy.

Demonstration

Watch the demonstration by TotalCheck: