PostcodesioR

While working with UK geographical data I often have to extract geolocation information about the UK postcodes. A convenient way to do it in R is to use geocode function from the ggmap package. This function provides latitude and longitude information using Google Maps API. This is very useful for mapping data points but doesn’t provide information about UK-specific administrative division.
I got fed up of merging my list of postcodes with a long list of corresponding wards etc., so I looked for smarter ways of getting this info.
That’s how I came across postcodes.io which is free, open source, and based solely on open data. This service is an API to geolocate UK postcode and provide additional administrative information. Full documentation explains in details many available options. Among geographic information you can pull using postcodes.io are:

I conduct most of my analyses in R so I developed wrapper functions around the API. Developmental version of the PostcodesioR package can be found on GitHub and documentation is here. It still doesn’t support all optional arguments but should do the job in most cases. A reference manual is here.

A mini-vignette (more to follow) showing how to run a lookup on a postcode, turn the result into a data frame, and then create an interactive map with leaflet:

The code above produces a data frame with key information

> glimpse(pc_df) Observations: 1 Variables: 28 $ postcode EC1Y 8LX $ quality 1 $ eastings 532544 $ northings 182128 $ country England $ nhs_ha London $ longitude -0.09092237 $ latitude 51.52252 $ parliamentary_constituency Islington South and Finsbury $ european_electoral_region London $ primary_care_trust Islington $ region London $ lsoa Islington 023D $ msoa Islington 023 $ incode 8LX $ outcode EC1Y $ admin_district Islington $ parish Islington, unparished area $ admin_county NA $ admin_ward Bunhill $ ccg NHS Islington $ nuts Haringey and Islington $ admin_district E09000019 $ admin_county E99999999 $ admin_ward E05000367 $ parish E43000209 $ ccg E38000088 $ nuts UKI43

and an interactive map showing geocoded postcode as a blue dot:

Eryk Walczak

My Blog about Data

Postcode and Geolocation API for the UK