Where can I find the shapefiles for Canadian postal codes?
Best Answer
As a heads-up, they changed the projection format between 2011 and 2016 in case you are upgrading your local data from 2011 to 2016. The 2011 shape file is NAD83 (4269), but the 2016 seems to be using Lambert projection (3348). I say seems because when I load the shape file it doesn't specifically seem to say the exact EPSG/SRID. I ended up converting the shape file to be 4326 so that it's the same as Google Maps.
2016 FSA Census Boundary files are now available (as of Sept 13, 2017 according to their site).
Stats Canada has since released the Forward Sortation Areas Boundary files (as of February 5, 2013 according to their site).
Statistics Canada has a page dedicated to making available different Shape files regarding Canadian Boundaries, both Geographical and Digital. (link is the same as the one mentioned above)
If you only need the geographic center of the postalcodes however (instead of the boundary), check out the free database at http://geocoder.ca/.
You can obtain the approx center of the FSA from this as well by grouping them by the first three digits of the PostalCode and then averaging the Latitude/Longitude. SQL would help do this much easier if you import the data into a database first.
Here's a query do do what I mean.
IF NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM zipcodeset WHERE LEN(PostalCode) = 3)
BEGIN
INSERT INTO zipcodeset(PostalCode, Latitude, Longitude)
SELECT LEFT(PostalCode,3), Avg(Latitude), Avg(Longitude)
FROM zipcodeset
GROUP BY LEFT(PostalCode,3)
END
This is probabaly not the answer you are looking for, but here it is:
You won't find them, since no one (not even the Postal Department) has Authentic Boundaries.
Pin codes in India are a way of indexing Post Offices. Multiple Post Offices can have one pin code, and one Post Office can deliver to Multiple Pincodes.
It's a Myth that there is such a thing as Pin Code boundaries, which form an mutually exclusive, and exhaustive polygon coverage of the country.
Some vendors offer this data for a price, but in my experience, that data is rubbish, and wrong in many areas that I have checked.
Best Answer
As a heads-up, they changed the projection format between 2011 and 2016 in case you are upgrading your local data from 2011 to 2016. The 2011 shape file is NAD83 (4269), but the 2016 seems to be using Lambert projection (3348). I say seems because when I load the shape file it doesn't specifically seem to say the exact EPSG/SRID. I ended up converting the shape file to be 4326 so that it's the same as Google Maps.
2016 FSA Census Boundary files are now available (as of Sept 13, 2017 according to their site).
Stats Canada has since released the Forward Sortation Areas Boundary files (as of February 5, 2013 according to their site).
Download Page for all 2011 Census Boundary Files
Download Page for all 2016 Census Boundary Files
Statistics Canada has a page dedicated to making available different Shape files regarding Canadian Boundaries, both Geographical and Digital. (link is the same as the one mentioned above)
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/geo/bound-limit/bound-limit-2011-eng.cfm
If you only need the geographic center of the postalcodes however (instead of the boundary), check out the free database at http://geocoder.ca/. You can obtain the approx center of the FSA from this as well by grouping them by the first three digits of the PostalCode and then averaging the Latitude/Longitude. SQL would help do this much easier if you import the data into a database first.
Here's a query do do what I mean.
FSA Boundary shapefiles are now published.