Is there a way to access the Bing Maps geocoding API via REST?

Question

Is there a way to access the Bing Maps API via REST to obtain geocoding information from an address? This is something that's trivial to do with Google and Yahoo; what I'm looking for is functionality like this, from Yahoo:

http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html

(Specifically, see the sample request URL on that page, but also imagine that URL with a simple "location" parameter rather than separate street, city, state, and zip parameters.)

I've found examples of using other parts of the Bing API via REST, but nothing that accesses the Maps API, or specifically, the geocoding functionality.

Answer 1

Use the Bing Maps Geocode Service: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966793.aspx

Answer 2

In short, no.

The Google API Terms Of Service states that...

the geocoding service may only be used in conjunction with displaying results on a Google map; geocoding results without displaying them on a map is prohibited. For complete details on allowed usage, consult the Maps API Terms of Service License Restrictions.

So Google tries to restrict as much as possible the use of the the Geocoding services outside of their API (their JavaScript objects). Recently a lot of posts were written about JSONP being suddenly broken with their service: http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=1872#c7

I think the real reason behind it is to prevent the use of the service with 3rd parties libraries and widgets.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

As far as I know, the SOAP client is the only one provided to access the geocoding service. I was expecting a REST access too because yahoo and google allow that, but I didn't find anything about it. Note however that I didn't find anything mentioning it wasn't possible to access the Bing Maps web services via REST, so there may be one....

Answer 4

Apparently, there now is a Bing Maps REST API: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff701713.aspx