将美国邮政编码映射到时区

当用户注册我们的应用程序,我们能够推断他们的邮政编码时,我们验证他们对国家数据库。从这个邮政编码来判断他们所在时区的最佳方法是什么?

我们试图尽量减少明确要求他们提供的数据量。如果我们最好的猜测是错误的,他们将能够以后手动设置时区。我知道邮政编码无法帮助我们确定美国以外的时区,但是在这种情况下,我们还是得手动询问,而且我们主要与美国打交道。

我发现了很多邮政编码数据库,到目前为止只有少数包含时区信息,但是那些包含时区信息的数据库并不是免费的,比如 这个。如果绝对有必要为此向服务支付订阅,那么就不值得这样做,我们只需要明确地询问用户。

虽然语言不是特别相关,因为我可能可以转换的东西,无论需要,我们正在使用 PHP 和 MySQL。

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Most states are in exactly one time zone (though there are a few exceptions). Most zip codes do not cross state boundaries (though there are a few exceptions).

You could quickly come up with your own list of time zones per zip by combining those facts.

Here's a list of zip code ranges per state, and a list of states per time zone.

You can see the boundaries of zip codes and compare to the timezone map using this link, or Google Earth, to map zips to time zones for the states that are split by a time zone line.

The majority of non-US countries you are dealing with are probably in exactly one time zone (again, there are exceptions). Depending on your needs, you may want to look at where your top-N non-US visitors come from and just lookup their time zone.

If you want, you can also get a feel for the timezone by asking the browser Josh Fraser has a nice write up on it here

var rightNow = new Date();
var jan1 = new Date(rightNow.getFullYear(), 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
var temp = jan1.toGMTString();
var jan2 = new Date(temp.substring(0, temp.lastIndexOf(" ")-1));
var std_time_offset = (jan1 - jan2) / (1000 * 60 * 60);

The second thing that you need to know is whether the location observes daylight savings time (DST) or not. Since DST is always observed during the summer, we can compare the time offset between two dates in January, to the time offset between two dates in June. If the offsets are different, then we know that the location observes DST. If the offsets are the same, then we know that the location DOES NOT observe DST.

var june1 = new Date(rightNow.getFullYear(), 6, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);
temp = june1.toGMTString();
var june2 = new Date(temp.substring(0, temp.lastIndexOf(" ")-1));
var daylight_time_offset = (june1 - june2) / (1000 * 60 * 60);
var dst;
if (std_time_offset == daylight_time_offset) {
dst = "0"; // daylight savings time is NOT observed
} else {
dst = "1"; // daylight savings time is observed
}

All credit for this goes to Josh Fraser.

This might help you with customers outside the US, and it might complement your zip approach.

Here is a SO questions that touch on getting the timezone from javascript

I just found a free zip database that includes time offset and participation in DST. I do like Erik J's answer, as it would help me choose the actual time zone as opposed to just the offset (because you never can be completely sure on the rules), but I think I might start with this, and have it try to find the best time zone match based on offset/dst configuration. I think I may try to set up a simple version of Development 4.0's answer to check against what I get from the zip info as a sanity test. It's definitely not as simple as I'd hope, but a combination should get me at least 90% sure of a user's time zone.

I've been working on this problem for my own site and feel like I've come up with a pretty good solution

1) Assign time zones to all states with only one timezone (most states)

and then either

2a) use the js solution (Javascript/PHP and timezones) for the remaining states

or

2b) use a database like the one linked above by @Doug.

This way, you can find tz cheaply (and highly accurately!) for the majority of your users and then use one of the other, more expensive methods to get it for the rest of the states.

Not super elegant, but seemed better to me than using js or a database for each and every user.

Also note, that if you happen to be using Yahoo geocoding service you can have timezone information returned to you by setting the correct flag.

http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/guide/requests.html#flags-parameter

I created an Open-Source (MIT licensed) MySQL database table that cross-references zip codes and timezones and uploaded it to sourceforge.net:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zip2timezone/files/

It is sourced from four locations (primary Yahoo PlaceFinder API - thanks @Chris N)

See the README file for more information and instructions.

Ruby gem to convert zip code to timezone: https://github.com/Katlean/TZip (forked from https://github.com/farski/TZip).

> ActiveSupport::TimeZone.find_by_zipcode('90029')
=> "Pacific Time (US & Canada)"

It's fast, small, and has no external dependencies, but keep in mind that zip codes just don't map perfectly to timezones.

Google has a specific API for this: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?location=40.704822,-74.0137431&timestamp=0

{
dstOffset: 0,
rawOffset: -18000,
status: "OK",
timeZoneId: "America/New_York",
timeZoneName: "Eastern Standard Time"
}

They require a unix timestamp on the querystring. From the response returned it appears that timeZoneName takes into account daylight savings, based on the timestamp, while timeZoneId is a DST-independent name for the timezone.

For my use, in Python, I am just passing timestamp=0 and using the timeZoneId value to get a tz_info object from pytz, I can then use that to localize any particular datetime in my own code.

I believe for PHP similarly you can find "America/New_York" in http://pecl.php.net/package/timezonedb

In addition to Doug Kavendek answer. One could use the following approach to get closer to tz_database.

  1. Download [Free Zip Code Latitude and Longitude Database]
  2. Download [A shapefile of the TZ timezones of the world]
  3. Use any free library for shapefile querying (e.g. .NET Easy GIS .NET, LGPL).
var shapeFile = new ShapeFile(shapeFilePath);
var shapeIndex = shapeFile.GetShapeIndexContainingPoint(new PointD(long, lat), 0D);
var attrValues = shapeFile.GetAttributeFieldValues(shapeIndex);
var timeZoneId = attrValues[0];

P.S. Can't insert all the links :( So please use search.

This will download a yaml file that will map all timezones to an array of their zipcodes:

curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/01bf19b21da3424f6418/raw/0d69a384f55c6f68244ddaa07e0c2272b44cb1de/timezones_to_zipcodes.yml > timezones_to_zipcodes.yml

e.g.

"Eastern Time (US & Canada)" => ["00100", "00101", "00102", "00103", "00104", ...]
"Central Time (US & Canada)" => ["35000", "35001", "35002", "35003", "35004", ...]
etc...

If you prefer the shortened timezones, you can run this one:

curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/4e04970131ca82945080/raw/e85876daf39a823e54d17a79258b170d0a33dac0/timezones_to_zipcodes_short.yml > timezones_to_zipcodes.yml

e.g.

"EDT" => ["00100", "00101", "00102", "00103", "00104", ...]
"CDT" => ["35000", "35001", "35002", "35003", "35004", ...]
etc...

There's actually a great Google API for this. It takes in a location and returns the timezone for that location. Should be simple enough to create a bash or python script to get the results for each address in a CSV file or database then save the timezone information.

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/timezone/start

Request Endpoint:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?location=38.908133,-77.047119&timestamp=1458000000&key=YOUR_API_KEY

Response:

{
"dstOffset" : 3600,
"rawOffset" : -18000,
"status" : "OK",
"timeZoneId" : "America/New_York",
"timeZoneName" : "Eastern Daylight Time"
}