CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptgoogle-mapsgeolocationreverse-geocoding
craymond
craymond

Reputation: 235

Reverse Geocoding with Google Map API


I'm working on the JavaScript Google Map API (Version3) and more precisely on the reverse geolocation. With the help of the official documentation, I successed to perform the reverse geocoding, I found the address corresponding to the latitude and longitude coordonates.
But I can't find how to reach the name bound to the address. Is it possible? How can it be performed?

Thanks you.
Camille.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4015

Answers (2)

Andrew - OpenGeoCode
Andrew - OpenGeoCode

Reputation: 2287

Google Map API has a Beta release version of a place lookup API. I think this is what your looking for. Basically, you pass a lat/lng or address and google does a reverse lookup of the address to a place name (if its in its database).

See their documentation at: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/places/

Excerpt from their intro on Places API:

The Places API has two basic types of requests, which are related: Place Search requests and Place Details requests. A Place Search request initiates a request for "places" around a provided location, often provided via geolocation (so that a user can search for the Place they are currently located or Places nearby). The Places API returns a list of candidate places that are near the provided location and the user can then initiate a Place Details request on a specific entity returned in the original search.

Upvotes: 0

ifaour
ifaour

Reputation: 38135

You really need to loop and do multiple checks of what google found at these points a small script to actually reads/loop the returned data would be (in PHP): 

<?php
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=46.1124,1.245&sensor=true"));
if($data->status == "OK") {
    if(count($data->results)) {
        foreach($data->results as $result) {
            echo $result->formatted_address . "<br />";
        }
    }
} else {
    // error
}
?>

Now based on the documentation:

Note that the reverse geocoder returned more than one result. ...etc

And:

Generally, addresses are returned from most specific to least specific; the more exact address is the most prominent result...etc

You only need the first result to get what you want (or at least to search for it there $data->results[0]->.
So have a read of the types and based on that you can check if the result you want present or not: 

<?php
$data = json_decode(file_get_contents("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=46.1124,1.245&sensor=true"));
if($data->status == "OK") {
    if(count($data->results)) {
        foreach($data->results[0]->address_components as $component) {
            if(in_array("premise",$component->types) || in_array("route",$component->types) || in_array("park",$component->types)) {
                echo $component->long_name . "<br />";
            }
        }
    }
} else {
    // error
}
?>

Upvotes: 3

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