I needed a small php function that could take an address (which lacked a zip code) and fetch a best guess postal code for it. I had a database full of addresses with city and state, but no zip code. Thankfully, if you have enough information in your address to locate it with the Google maps geocoding service, you have enough information to get the zip code. If not the correct zip code, it should pull one that’s relatively close assuming you’ve specified the correct city and state in your address.
This is possible because the geocoding service will return matches with full address data available. If we assume that the first match is most likely the correct match, we can just extract it’s postal code. I’ve only tested this with US addresses, but it may work in other countries where Google can geocode an address.
