Databases for things like dictionaries, zip codes etc

Question

Where can I find/get databases for things like dictionaries, list of states, zip codes, cities etc? Preferably open-source or free and for MySQL but converting from another db or XML to MySQL with PHP would be a fun side project.

Answer 1

We often used the data of http://www.geonames.org/ There's a nice tutorial at the forum to learn how to import the date into a MySQL-Database: http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/732.page

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

If the datasets are not sufficient enough, there are a lot of open APIs:

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