Steps to setup postgres postgis tiger geocoder

First install postgresql, psql and postgis on your system

Create a new database and a super user with the following SQL commands

CREATE DATABASE project_name;
CREATE USER super_user WITH SUPERUSER PASSWORD 'password';

Create .env file

1. Create a new file named .env
2. Copy the contents of the .env.example file and paste them into the new .env file
3. Replace the placeholder values in the .env file with the actual values for your local environment
4. Save the changes made to the .env file, also make sure these environment variables names are not previously used for other purpose and set directly to avoid any possible collision

• You can use one of the two scripts to setup your postgis tiger database in your device, tiger_setup.py and download_script.py
• Install unzip or 7z(unziptool) and wget(wgettool), replace their placeholder path if you are using tiger_setup.py, you dont need them if you are using download_script.py
• Check https://www.census.gov/library/reference/code-lists/ansi.html#state for state list
• The state you added should be present in "abbr - fips.json" file, if not you can add it with its fips code in "abbr - fips.json" file and see if that fips have data in their web server
• Now make sure every path in .env file is correct and installed properly by calling them from your terminal

Install the required packages

pip install -r requirements.txt

Create and activate a virtual environment

python3.11 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Now run script to setup db

Run this script if you dont want to install and add their path to .env file

python download_script.py 

Run this script if you already have installed unziptool and wgettool and added their path to .env file and when previous one didnt work for you for some reason

python tiger_setup.py

Now you can use tiger geocode, Here's an example code

from geocoder import Database


if __name__ == "__main__":
    db = Database()
    print(db.get_geocoded_data("60 TEMPLE PL, BOSTON, MA"))

That's it! You should now be able to use TIGER geocoding in Python