Chapter 6.5 - Geocode Offline

AFC Geo REST v2 may be offline apart from Communications REST v2, or at the same time. Similar principals apply to AFC Geo requests:

  1. Detect the dropped connection and prevent a crash
  2. Retry the request or fall back to saved geocoding results

Detect the dropped connection in the same way as you do for a tax calculation.

After your application detects a timeout or an error, it must next make a decision whether to retry the request or fall back to saved geocoding results.

Retry a Request

Retry your request a few times if timeouts are still being returned:

  1. Retry the request
  2. Wait 1 second and retry the request
  3. Wait several seconds and retry the request

It’s important that you don’t retry so often that your attempts are mistaken as a denial-of-service attack. Limit your retries to 5 to 10 attempts to prevent a backlog of concurrent requests and allow system time to recover.

Some applications attempt to reuse HTTP connections. In the event that you experience a connection disruption, we suggest creating a completely new connection for the next attempt.

Fall back to saved geocoding results

Save geocoding results quarterly by running processing addresses or latitude/longitude coordinate pairs that cover your business needs (such as all new customer data received within the last 3 months). In the event of a timeout or other type of error, fall back to these saved results.

Things to consider when falling back to saved geocoding results:

  • AFC Geo is updated on an off-quarter cycle. Map data and special tax jurisdictions are generally only updated during this quarterly release
  • PCode and other characteristics of a location do not change often, if at all, once the data has been set
  • Special tax jurisdictions may be added or removed from a primary jurisdiction during a quarterly release based on the local jurisdiction legislation
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