Parse Japanese addresses with regular expressions

background

The format of Japanese addresses posted on the net is usually fixed. It should be displayed as it flows from the zip code to the prefecture, city, ward, and town. And there are many specifications such as Google Geocoding by extracting the regular expression zip code or prefecture name.

Regular expressions

What you have to be careful about here is that you cannot use the greedy mode to extract the prefecture name or city name. Not (. \ * Prefecture) but (. \ *? Prefecture) Otherwise, for example, the analysis result of "Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture" will be extracted to "Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture" instead of "Aichi Prefecture".

Source code

String matchString = "〒066-0012\n" +
        "Bibi, Chitose City, Hokkaido New Chitose Airport Domestic Terminal Building 2F";

Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("\\s*〒(\\d{3}-\\d{4})[\\s　]*(.*?Tokyo)?(.*?road)?(.*?Fu)?(.*?Prefecture)?(.*?city)?(.*?Ward)?").matcher(matchString);

while (matcher.find()){
    System.out.println("Street address:" + matcher.group(0));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("Postal code:" + matcher.group(1));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("City name:" + matcher.group(2));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("Road name:" + matcher.group(3));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("Prefecture name:" + matcher.group(4));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("Prefecture name:" + matcher.group(5));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("City name:" + matcher.group(6));
    System.out.println();
    System.out.println("Ward name" + matcher.group(7));
}
      

result

Street address:〒066-0012
Chitose City, Hokkaido

Postal code:066-0012

City name:null

Road name:Hokkaido

Prefecture name:null

Prefecture name:null

City name:Chitose

Ward name null

It's a simple content, but I posted it because I thought it would be used often.