Databases for things like dictionaries, zip codes, etc.

Question

Where can I find / get databases for things like dictionaries, state lists, zip codes, cities, etc.? Preferably open-source or free for MySQL, but converting from another db or XML to MySQL with PHP would be an interesting project.

Answer 1

We often used the data from http://www.geonames.org/ There is a good tutorial on the forum to find out how to import the date into the MySQL database: http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/732.page

They also have a webservice: http://www.geonames.org/export/web-services.html

If the data sets are not enough, there are many open APIs:

http://www.programmableweb.com/apitag/?q=zip%20codes

Answer 2

There are many places where you can find interesting data online: The World Bank has released an extensive dataset that you can download and use for free. You can also extract some of the structured data from Wikipedia through the DBpedia service . If you want to use more specific data from corporate or government agencies (how much did your government spend last year? Where are the crimes?), Check out the Open Knowledge Foundations data repository at Data Center .

Answer 3

Try Freebase .

Amazon EC2's "Public Datasets" feature is also available.

Answer 4

Personally, I love http://snipplr.com for this. Just search mysql countries (replace the countries with what you want), and you have a great opportunity to find what you are looking for.

I could not find the dictionary there, so I would recommend converting XML to SQL http://www.ibiblio.org/webster/ db.

Answer 5

There's a lot of good stuff at http://www.data.gov/ , although most of it probably needs to be converted.

Answer 6

The easiest and most accurate way to get this information is to extract it from http://www.openstreetmap.org/