Gabon home codes

What a code is

Every compound in Gabon has an N-Ways code: the short name of its quarter or village and a number of three to five digits, such as Louis 1201 or Mont-Bouët 1957. Each code is unique in the whole country on its own and leads to the compound’s gate. Codes start provisional and become confirmed when residents agree in the N-Ways app.

• Remembered form, what people say, type and write on plates: Louis 12 01, also without the space (Louis 1201); five digits read as a pair and a hundred (Port-Gentil 12 181, Libreville 11 001). Any case and accents (mont bouet 1957 finds Mont-Bouët 1957), and the official name in place of the short one (Derrière l’Hôpital 11001 finds Libreville 11001). People never see or type a check digit.
• Machine form, for systems, QR codes and links: GA-1LV-070-1201-1 (the département, the area, the number and a Damm check digit that catches every single wrong digit and every swap of two neighbouring digits).
• Spot code, for any point: GA-1LV E0794 N0757, a 10 m cell of its département’s grid; every card also carries its gate’s Plus Code (6FGFCC5J+CH2).

On a named street of Libreville the street comes first, in officialAddress with "coverage": "official-street"; a door number of the commune’s plan takes its place once it is known. No département is needed to decode a code; municipality is looked up from the position. The model, the engine, the registry of every code and a ready-made server are open: github.com/n-ways/open-addresses-gabon. The research paper explains every rule.

Look up a code

GET https://map.nways.ng/v1/homecodes/{code}, where code is the remembered or machine form, or a spot code on a compound, URL-encoded. No key is needed.

curl "https://map.nways.ng/v1/homecodes/GA-1LV-070-1201-1"

{
  "country": "GA",
  "home": "Louis 1201",
  "machine": "GA-1LV-070-1201-1",
  "check": 1,
  "name": "Louis",
  "coverage": "official-street",
  "officialAddress": "Avenue Joseph Deemin, Libreville",
  "nameProvisional": false,
  "municipality": "Libreville",
  "fullLine": "Louis 12 01",
  "spoken": "Louis, 12 01",
  "status": "provisional",
  "issued": "bulk",
  "entrance": { "lat": 0.4085002, "lng": 9.4314043, "kind": "centre", "source": "map" },
  "location": { "lat": 0.4085002, "lng": 9.4314043 },
  "plusCode": "6FGFCC5J+CH2",
  "lote": { "class": "residential", "coverage": "official-street", "enclosed": false, "floorAreaM2": 122.2, "kind": "building", "official": "Avenue Joseph Deemin, Libreville", "rule": "single", "structures": 1, "use": "residential" },
  "credit": "N-Ways Addressing for Gabon, © N-WAYS LIMITED (nways.ng)",
  "creditUrl": "https://github.com/n-ways/open-addresses-gabon"
}

Errors: 400 homecode_format when the text isn’t a code; 404 homecode_unknown with a message saying why (a name no area has, a number in no block of its name).

What’s the code here?

GET https://map.nways.ng/v1/homecodes/at?lat=…&lng=… answers for a point: "status": "found" with the code, or "none" where no compound has one yet. This point in Libreville answers Libreville 11001.

curl "https://map.nways.ng/v1/homecodes/at?lat=0.39&lng=9.45"

Search

A code typed into N-Ways search, in any of its forms, finds the compound’s gate as the first result, with "category": "homecode" and the credit in attribution.

Decode offline

The repository’s reference engine (Python, standard library only) decodes every form, checks the machine form and reads and writes spot codes, with no network: python3 engine/reference/ga_engine.py resolve Louis 12 01. Its conformance vectors (engine/reference/vectors.json) are the test for your own implementation, and engine/data/register.json holds every area and name with its frozen blocks. registry/ holds every issued code, one file per département, and the registry server in server/ serves it from your own machine.

Host it yourself

You can serve Gabon’s codes from your own servers, with no calls to N-Ways. The repository on GitHub holds every issued code (registry/), the code areas and the model (model/), the reference engine, and a ready-made registry server with its JSON API:

git clone https://github.com/n-ways/open-addresses-gabon
cd open-addresses-gabon/server
docker compose up -d

The server imports the registry on first start, then answers lookups and searches on your machine; server/README.md covers configuration, backups and updates, and docs/api.md every endpoint. Your copy is read-only: new codes come from one issuer per country, N-Ways unless the State designates another, so no number is ever given twice. Pull the repository again for the codes issued since.

The full terms, and the credit line for maps and datasets made from the data (it also names OpenStreetMap), are in LICENSING.md. You may say your product uses N-Ways Addressing, not that it is N-Ways or is endorsed by N-Ways.