Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#1

Post by rodrigoavie » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:39 PM UTC

Hi everyone, I have a list of city names say, all the cities in Germany, and I want to get lat/lng coordinates for each one of them.

Is there any API I can use to get this kind of data? Google and Foursquare did not seem to help with that

thanks for your time

UPDATE: you people are amazing, thanks for the responses!

Re: Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#2

Post by runlevel1 » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:43 PM UTC

Google's Geocoding API does just that.

Example:

    https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=Berlin&sensor=false

Re: Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#3

Post by conductor » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:45 PM UTC

It's called geocoding. There are several free services who provide API. Here are two of them from the first page of my search results:

https://geoservices.tamu.edu/Services/Geocode/WebService/

http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/dev-services/geoc...

Re: Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#4

Post by taurenk » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:54 PM UTC

Geonames.org has files containing zip code, city and, lat/lon: http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/

Hope this helps.

Re: Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#5

Post by rodrigoavie » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:57 PM UTC

runlevel1 wrote: post #2

Google's Geocoding API does just that. Example: https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=Berlin&sensor=false

thanks! That is exactly what I was looking for!

Re: Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#6

Post by rodrigoavie » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:57 PM UTC

conductor wrote: post #3

It's called geocoding. There are several free services who provide API. Here are two of them from the first page of my search results: https://geoservices.tamu.edu/Services/Geocode/WebService/ http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/dev-services/geoc...

thank you so much!

Re: Ask HN: API to discover lat/long coordinates from a city name and country

#7

Post by rodrigoavie » Tue, Oct 07, 2014, 7:58 PM UTC

taurenk wrote: post #4

Geonames.org has files containing zip code, city and, lat/lon: http://download.geonames.org/export/zip/ Hope this helps.

Sure it helps! Even if this database does not contain every city that I wanna check, it definitely helps.

thank you very much