Slate provides real-time and batched validation and standardization for United States and Canadian addresses that are submitted either interactively or non-interactively.

Interactive validation and standardization

When an address is entered on a form, the address is validated and standardized immediately upon submission.

This validation and standardization happens interactively, meaning that, if the validator finds that the address is unverifiable or ambiguous, the user is prompted to make the requested corrections.

If the user ignores these recommendations, the submission continues without modification. An exception to this occurs when the address is ambiguous and the validator can provide additional standardization.

If the address is verifiable, the address is immediately standardized. For example, 123 Main Street becomes 123 Main St.

The standardization process corrects or fills in the street, city, state, and 9-digit postal codes. When standardized, the [quality] field on the [address] table will be set to 0.

If the user elects to skip validation, this [quality] field is set to 1.

📖 Address quality

Batch standardization

Addresses that come in through non-interactive sources, such as through uploaded datasets, receive a [quality] rating of 2, indicating the address awaits standardization.

Every evening, or on demand as initiated by an administrator in Database → Scrub Address Records, addresses with a [quality] of 2 will seek to be standardized. If they can be successfully standardized, their [quality] is updated to 0. If not, the [quality] is updated to 1.

Because addresses may not validate for a variety of reasons, the addresses are not marked explicitly as invalid (as designated with a [quality] rating of 3) as part of this batched process.