Geocode offline

AFC Geo REST v2 is offline. It can be offline either apart from Communications REST v2 or at the same time. Similar principals apply to AFC Geo requests:

Detect the dropped connection and prevent a crash.
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 decide 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:

Retry the request.
Wait 1 second and retry the request.
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 the system time to recover.

Some applications attempt to reuse HTTP connections. If you experience a connection disruption, we suggest creating a 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 only updated during this quarterly release.
PCode and other characteristics of a location don’t 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.