[Shippo] Address Validation API Returns Valid Zip Code Even When Invalid Zip Code is Passed

It appears that Shippo’s Address Validation API can retrieve a valid zip code even when an invalid zip code is passed.

Background: Want to Validate Zip Code

Address Validation API | Shippo

This article describes how I wanted to validate zip codes and checked whether Shippo’s Address Validation API could be used for verification.

Even Random Zip Codes Return VALID

Here’s a sample code:

Request

I tried sending a validation API request with zip=a, a value that doesn’t exist in the US.

curl https://api.goshippo.com/addresses/ \\
    -H "Authorization: ShippoToken " \\
    -d name="Shawn Ippotle" \\
    -d company="Shippo" \\
    -d street1="215 Clayton St." \\
    -d city="San Francisco" \\
    -d state="CA" \\
    -d zip=a \\
    -d country="US" \\
    -d email="[email protected]"\\
    -d validate=true

Response

I confirmed that the API response returns “object_state”: “VALID” and “zip”: “94117-1913”, which is a correct value.

{
  "object_state":"VALID",
  "object_purpose":"QUOTE",
  "object_source":"VALIDATOR",
  "object_created":"2019-09-10T12:50:31.681Z",
  "object_updated":"2019-09-10T12:50:31.689Z",
  "object_id":"5cee8f0855514008a9688f9199df6fa6",
  "object_owner":"[email protected]",
  "name":"Shawn Ippotle",
  "company":"Shippo",
  "street_no":"",
  "street1":"215 Clayton St",
  "street2":"",
  "street3":"",
  "city":"San Francisco",
  "state":"CA",
  "zip":"94117-1913",
  "country":"US",
  "longitude":-122.44938,
  "latitude":37.77335,
  "phone":"",
  "email":"[email protected]",
  "is_residential":true,
  "ip":"",
  "messages":[

  ],
  "metadata":"",
  "test":true
}

It seems that the Address Validation API cannot validate the input zip value. However, since it can retrieve the correct zip based on country, state, city, street1, etc., I think implementing it to use the zip from the API response would work fine.

That’s all from the Gemba.