Discovery
City, region, and country are often enough for browse pages, member search, and marketplace filters.
Guide
How to build a location field without collecting street addresses
A useful location field does not always need a house number, street name, or postal address. For many products, city, region, and country data is enough.
Start with the product need
Before choosing a map, geocoding, or address autocomplete tool, decide what your application will actually do with the location. The field should collect the least precise data that still supports that workflow.
The broader location autocomplete decision guide compares country, region, city, address, POI search, geocoding, and reverse geocoding fields.
Profiles
Public profiles usually benefit from broad location context without exposing a precise street address.
Operations
Shipping, dispatch, billing, and field service often need address-level tools instead.
Compliance
Some workflows have legal or risk requirements that define the minimum location precision.
A practical field design
Use one visible input labeled for the user's mental model, such as "Location" or "City". Let autocomplete suggest administrative places, then store structured data behind the scenes.
For PlaceField, that means storing the returned location ID, type, label, country, hierarchy, and coordinates when available. The same API can support city, region, and country suggestions; you are not choosing a separate API for each layer.
Widget example
PlaceField.widget("#location", {
endpoint: "https://api.placefield.dev/v1/locations/autocomplete",
key: "pf_pub_xxx",
geoBias: "country",
mobile: "fullscreen"
});What not to collect
Do not ask for a street address if your product only needs a regional search filter, a city shown on a profile, or a marketplace location badge. Extra precision can increase friction and create data you do not need to protect.
Also avoid promising city-level autocomplete as address validation. They solve different problems.
Where PlaceField fits
PlaceField is built for location autocomplete fields that return cities, municipalities, administrative areas, regions, and countries. It is not a postal address validator, reverse geocoder, POI database, routing engine, or map UI.
For implementation details, compare the location autocomplete widget and API reference.
Tell us about your location field
Share what you need to do with the location and whether city, region, country, or all three should be selectable.