Zipcode Searches
Websites that allow searching for locations or outlets from a database often limit the search parameters to state or city. The last is problematic, since many USPS-compliant town designations are actually political subdivisions within a larger, more recognizable city (Flatbush in NYC, Addison in Dallas, etc.). A more flexible way to search is a radial zipcode search, in which the user is allowed to enter their own zipcode and a distance in miles, and the results return all matches within that distance. We do that by using a freely-available database of U.S. zipcodes with geographical coordinates, and a PHP script that passes the parameters to a module, which does the calculations, and passes back an object containing all matching results.
