Companies purchase national master address lists to use in many ways for many reasons.    Though some might assume the only reason to purchase a national address list is to blanket-mail or ship things to people not already in a company’s database, the lists are extensively used for asset location tracking, resource planning, market intelligence, operations optimization, business strategy, and decision making.   Let’s take a closer look at the first non-mailing use case: asset location tracking. 

Get a simple explanation of how companies use master address lists with persistent unique identifiers to improve asset tracking. 3-minute read. Learn here.

Using A Master Address List to Improve Asset Tracking

There are two types of frequent errors: 401 "Authentication Required" errors, and 402 "Payment Required" errors.    Status Code 401 - Authentication Required  If you're seeing this error there's a chance that there's an issue with your API key, there's a mistake inside your client-side request, or a mistake in the server-side request.  In the recording Lyle dives deep into each of these, but here are the basics.   How to Authenticate API Requests  It is important that you are familiar with your API keys. 

WEBINAR RECAP: While our documentation and tutorials are solid as Chris Hemsworth's abs, there are still some common API mistakes our support team has run into when helping our customers. In a recent webinar, our Support Team Lead Lyle Durland went over a few of those common mistakes and outlined what you need to know so that you never run into API problems again. Probably.

Common Mistakes When Calling Smarty APIs

Are you looking to use an API to verify addresses and convert them to latitude and longitude coordinates?  Maybe you also need to standardize addresses in order to de-duplicate records across millions of addresses in your database too.  That’s right, we’re talking about validating, standardizing, and bulk-processing geocodes with a geocoding API.   There are several options out there, so let us tell you how *speed* sets Smarty apart from the rest.   Smarty is fast.  Now, we’re not just talking about fast like Usain Bolt. 

What is the hardest part of processing loads of data? Finding a way to do it fast. Luckily, Smarty is able to process millions of addresses per minute!

Our Fast Processing Speeds

Improving address form completion rates—whether in a shopping cart, request for quote, or other form—can be a sinch if you’re using an address autocomplete tool.  Not sure what that is? When you see an address line on a form and think “oh shoot this is going to take a minute” and then it fills it in after only a few keystrokes, that’s address autocomplete.   And no, not all address autocomplete tools are created equal.   Some check against their own address database only that is not frequently maintained. 

WEBINAR RECAP: We hosted a webinar talking about Smarty’s US Autocomplete Pro API and how it differs from other autocomplete tools in reliability, accuracy, & customizability.

An Advanced Look at US Autocomplete Pro API

Smarty Unveils Unmatched QGIS Geocoding Accuracy with Release of Geocoding Plugin - US Address    PROVO, UT - June 21, 2002 - Smarty, a leader in location data intelligence, announces today the release of their QGIS Geocoding Plugin for US Addresses to provide an easy way for users of the popular GIS software platform to validate, standardize, and convert addresses to their latitude and longitude coordinates (geocodes).  The plugin allows manual address entry as well as batch geocoding via CSV. 

Smarty announces new rooftop accurate QGIS Geocoding Plugin to validate, standardize, and geocode US addresses.

Smarty Unveils High-Accuracy QGIS Geocoding Plugin

It's been said that naming is one of the two hardest problems in computer science along with cache invalidation and 'off-by-one' errors.  (See what I did there?) Do you ever find yourself wondering what policies and practices you could adopt to make your life easier when reading code you wrote months ago? Or maybe you're up at night wishing you know how to write code in such a way as to maximize adoption and convenience for your users? Well, look no further because we've anticipated the need, solved the problem, and now we're sharing our knowledge and wisdom at no charge, all out of the goodness of our hearts in this comprehensive, totally no-nonsense (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) style guide of Go naming conventions. 

The style guide tutorial you never knew you didn't need

Go Naming Conventions

One topic that seems to come up repeatedly on Stack Overflow or other online forums is the topic of how to go get private dependencies.  Specifically, if I have a private Git repository on Github or Bitbucket, how do I bring that code locally via the go get tool such that automated builds can produce a clean, consistent build without interaction from a user? This problem is largely solved for public Github dependencies but continues to be a challenge for private dependencies.  To reiterate, if you're only cloning publicly available dependencies, you probably won't be reading this post. 

One topic that seems to come up repeatedly on Stack Overflow or other online forums is the topic of how to GO GET private dependencies. We can help.

Cloning Private Dependencies in Docker and Go

Writing test functions in Go is easy:  go package stuff  import "testing"  func TestStuff(t testing. T) {     t. Log("Hello, World!") }   Running test functions is also easy:   $ go test -v === RUN   TestStuff --- PASS: TestStuff (0. 00s) 	stuff_test. go:6: Hello, World! PASS ok  	github. com/smartystreets/stuff	0. 006s   Preparing shared state for multiple test functions is problematic.  The usual recommendation is to use table-drive tests.  But this approach has its limits.  For us, xUnit is the ideal solution. 

Why? What do you mean 'why'? Because we can! What's wrong with you?

Let's build an xUnit-style test runner for Go!

I was recently asked two interesting questions:  1.  Why did you move from GoConvey to gunit? 2.  Are you recommending folks do the same?  These are great questions, and since I'm a co-creator of GoConvey and principle author of gunit I feel responsible to give a thorough answer.  For the impatient, here's the TL;DR:  Question 1: Why did you move to gunit?  > After using GoConvey and feeling consistent friction with that approach, we came up with an alternate approach that was more aligned with what we value in a testing library and which eliminated said friction. 

A response to the question: Should I follow Smarty and leave GoConvey for gunit?

A History of Testing in Go at Smarty

TODO:   - link to Jonathan's posts on why we left . Net and why we embraced Go and linux - Explain cleancoderse. com - Explain how the case studies work - Introduce the Go case study - Include small blurb from each episode's intro. 

Smarty has partnered with cleancoders.com to create a Go programming video series.

GO: With Intensity

For the purpose of this article, consider the following CSV data, slightly modified from the docs for encoding/csv:  go csvData := strings. NewReader(strings. Join([]string{ 	first_name,last_name,username, 	"Rob","Pike",rob, 	Ken,Thompson,ken, 	"Robert","Griesemer","gri", }, "\n"))   Here's how you read the data, line by line, using the Reader provided in that package:  go reader := csv. NewReader(csvData)  for { 	record, err := reader. Read() 	if err == io. EOF { 		break 	} 	if err != nil { 		// handle the error. 

Wouldn't it be nice if csv.Reader was more like bufio.Scanner?

Scanning CSV in Go

For this installment of the Testing in Go series we'll be talking about a grouping of packages that facilitate general-purpose comparisons in various contexts.  Since the most common context is testing it seemed like this series was the right place for the discussion.   We generally refer to these comparison functions as assertions (cue ominous background music and spooky sound effects).  You may have already read the opinions found on the Golang FAQ related to assertions.   "Why does Go not have assertions?"  > Go doesn't provide assertions. 

Testing in Go by Example: Part 6

Introduction  TL;DR: Choose an approach to software testing that helps your organization create the best possible end results.  That might mean using and/or creating a few tools and/or libraries along the way.  Or, maybe not.  What follows is a description of what we do at SmartyStreets, couched as a response to Dan Mullineux's equally valid way of doing things.    The cost  > A favourite test helper library, with some simple test assertion functions clearly has some value. . .  They [testing libraries] are not so bad, but they come at a cost, defer to avoid them. 

We care about testing our software and we create tools and libraries that help us.

Our Testing Tools

I was given the task of setting up a tinc VPN so that we could test performance for comparison against other VPN systems.  This task took much longer than it should have.  For that reason I am making this post to help myself and others remember how to do it again in the future.   ----------  Installing tinc is straightforward enough.  You can download the latest release and build it, or install from your favorite package manager.   The configuration for tinc lives in /etc/tinc.  The configuration is what seems to be the hard part of getting tinc to work. 

A quick and dirty reference guide on how to setup a Tinc VPN.

How To Setup A Tinc VPN

Not every server is made equally.  On dedicated servers the hardware varies widely.  On virtual and cloud servers the resource allocations also vary widely.  Some servers are CPU optimized for maximum computing power.  Others focus on having a lot of memory.  Some servers are built to have a good balance of all system resources.   Hardware aside, we require many differing tasks of our servers.  Some applications are processor hungry, some need large amounts of disk space, while others take up a lot of memory. 

A quick how-to guide for using the Phoronix Test Suite to measure server effectiveness.

Performance Testing With Phoronix

For this installment of the Testing in Go series I'll share a really nifty way to deal with time in your unit tests.  When the behavior you are testing depends on the current time it can be tricky to assert on the results because the current time is a moving target.  So, usually we end up resorting to approximations in our assertions that, while functional, always bother me a bit.  In some cases, depending directly on the system's current time prevents acceptable test coverage.   Consider this trivial example, which defines a calendar service with a method that identifies the current quarter of the current calendar year:   File: calendar. 

An elegant and effective strategy for dealing with time in unit tests

Testing in Go by example: Part 5

I think it's time for a slight detour.  In part 1 we covered the basics of testing in go.  In part 2 we covered a few slick ways to execute tests.  In part 3 we covered some of our recent endeavors at Smarty to build on the basics.  Toward the end of that post we went into some detail regarding our approach to assertions.  The assertions referenced in the GoConvey project are actually their own separate project that are imported into GoConvey.  The nice thing about separating the assertions into their own separate project is that they can be used, well, separately. 

Testing in Go by example: Part 4

A Deceitfully Comforting Illusion --- In the US today, there are nearly 800,000 registered sex offenders.  As part of the registration process, each sex offender is required to report their physical address to a local police department (the exact process varies from state to state).  This is intended to empower the public to be able to identify where these offenders live and if one of them lives near you.  Having this information, you are supposed to be able to better protect your loved ones and yourself. 

State sex offender registries were created to keep families safe, but bad addresses cause them to fall far short of their purpose.

America's Sex Offender Registries

This post contains additional data referenced from the original sex offender registry post.        Records containing the following were excluded from our statistical analysis:  [Click to return to article]   state=?? and zip=00000 or 11111 street contains "not available" street contains "incarcerated" or "incac" or "incrc" or "incarc" street contains "prison" street contains "absconded" or "absconced" or "absc" street contains "detention" or "det" or "det ctr" or "det center" or "detain" or "dt ctr" street contains "deported" street contains "incarc" street contains "unknown" or "unk" street contains "deceas" or "deseas" street contains "jail" street contains "custody" street contains "immigration" street contains "transien" or "transnt" or "trnsnt" street contains "homeles" or "homles" street contains "inmate" street contains "out of state" street contains "xxx" street contains "failure" or "fail" street contains "fail" street contains "register" street contains "verif" street contains "behav" street contains "institut" or "inst" street is blank street contains "vicinity" street contains "fugit" street contains "no longer" street contains "correctio" or "corr" or "correct" street contains "complia" street contains "reform" street contains "block of" or "blk of" or "blk" state is blank and city contains "unk" street contains "&" street contains "underpass" street contains "offend" street contains "resident" street contains "between" city contains "unknown" AND zip contains "00000" street contains "moved" street contains "nonresident" street contains "unconfirmed" state and zip are same AND city is blank zip contains "jail" city contains "Not available" and zip is unintelligible as a zip street = city street contains " street + city + state has more than two entries street contains "complex" street contains "reincarc" city contains "convict" street contains "usp" street contains "penit" street contains "hosp" street contains "louis" and city is "St. 

Records excluded from our statistical analysis and percent of bad addresses in each state’s sex offender registry.

Appendix: America's Sex Offender Registries

Here at Smarty, we're mostly programmers and developers.  There are a  few needles in the haystack here that don't know "Unix" from "eunuchs", which is unfortunate, but we're working on that.  And because we're all tech geeks over here, we like to talk about code, and tech, and why all that stuff is important.  In that spirit, we decided to talk about code in a way that maybe all of us should have considered a long time ago.    Your Hidden Meanings  Let's start with a scenario.  Imagine you go on a museum tour. 

Artists put effort into their work that they don't have to. As coders, so do we. This is important, because it's actually what separates Art from work.

Code as Art

Review:  Welcome to part 3 of our "Testing in Go" series.  If you're new here, feel free to catch up before reading on.   In part 1 of this series I eluded to our perceptions of the standard testing tools provided by the Go tool and the standard library and what was missing for us.  We all have different expectations of a testing tool and so it's no wonder that so many have been created.   Part 2 of the series focused on how we have made the act of running tests effortless and automatic.    Introduction  In this post and the next few posts I'll focus on our approach to writing actual tests. 

Conveying behavior with our approach to BDD in Go

Testing in Go by example: Part 3

Here's part 2 of our "Testing in Go" series.  If you're new, feel free to catch up before reading on.   ------------------------   Basics  You've already learned how to execute tests in Go for a single package.    $ go test   There's a bit more to it, though.  You can run any package from anywhere if you provide the import path.  For example, this command runs the actual tests for the "testing" package from the standard library:   $ go test -v testing   If you've already run go get github. com/bradfitz/http2 you can execute those tests from anywhere with this:   $ go test -v github. 

Tests that aren't easy to execute will be ignored.

Testing in Go by example: Part 2

Here's part 1 of our "Testing in Go" series.    Introduction  Thinking about trying Go? You won't regret it! It's great that testing is baked into the "testing" package from the standard library and the corresponding go test command (which has all sorts of useful and interesting flags).   We'd like to show you how easy it is to get started using the built-in testing tools and introduce you to some tools we've created.  This is the first installment of a series designed to do just that.   All you have to do is create a file named like *test. 

How to use the built-in 'testing' package.

Testing in Go by example: Part 1

While it's an unfortunate truth of of today's e-commerce world, it is one that cannot be ignored: Fraud is ever-present in online transactions.  The expense of unnecessary shipping costs and human resources, disgruntled customers, and the time it takes to investigate disputes adds up.  And the damage to a company's brand may result in untold amounts of lost sales.    Using an address verification service (or AVS) as one of the tools in your fraud management toolbox is a smart and cost-effective move. 

How to use USPS Address Verification to Prevent Fraud.

Using USPS Address Verification to Prevent Fraud

Posted by Rob G.      Must Have Address to Play  Every month, tens of billions of apps are downloaded from the Google Play store.  Users of those apps have historically had limited contact with the app developers for asking questions or lodging a complaint.  And getting a response from some developers has proved to be a very difficult experience.    Google briefly considered requiring app developers to provide their physical address or have their app removed from Google's play store.  Providing a physical address where customer questions or complaints can be handled would work well for developers that have a separate business address. 

Google has decided jump into the Big Brother arena with their latest project, Google Strands: a DNA-based developer identification system.

Google Retracts Physical Address Requirement for Play Store Developers

You asked for it and now you've got it.   For packages that pass all tests, coverage reports are generated and made available by clicking the package name, which in that case becomes a link (provided you've cleared your browser's cache!).     Right now the coverage command that is run is something like this:      $ go test -covermode=set -coverprofile=. txt      That command generates a plain text profile used in the following command:      $ go tool cover -html=. txt -o . html      . . . which plunks down an html file which we can link to from the UI. 

For packages that pass all tests, coverage reports are generated and made available by clicking the package name.

HTML Coverage Reports with GoConvey

One of the great benefits of TDD/BDD is that you usually don't have to spend much, if any time at all in a debugger.  To enter a debugger is to admit a loss of control over the system under test.  Even so, there are times when you do need to debug something, even if you're maintaining the discipline.   Lately, most of my coding is in GoLang.  Coming from using an IDE almost exclusively to write Python (using PyCharm) and C# (using VS and ReSharper), and knowing how great the visual debugging tools are it's hard to fathom using a console-based debugger for GoLang code. 

One of the great benefits of TDD/BDD is that you usually don't have to spend much, if any time at all in a debugger...

Your Convey needs more Focus

It's now been a few months since I decided that the kind of testing tools I wanted for Go programming hadn't yet been created (or I just hadn't found them yet. . . ).  So, about 4 months ago I started work on GoConvey and a month later came the first release.     The coolest thing about GoConvey (other than the clean DSL, comprehensive set of built-in assertions, and the fact that it integrates fully with go test) is the built-in auto-reloading web UI that reports your test results to your web browser whenever a relevant file is saved (HTML5 notifications included). 

GoConvey features a clean DSL, comprehensive set of built-in assertions, an auto-reloading web UI and fully integrates with GoTest.

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