free api for place names area names etc.

Question

Hi,

I do not think there is something like this but I give it a go anyway.

Let us say I have a square defined by two points (latitude, longitude combination). Is there a (free) API (gazetteer?) which returns the country/countries in which the square is located and possibly place names, cities, admin area names within the square?

Another useful API would be one which returns the same information as above given a point (latitude, longitude) and a (predefined) radius.

I would prefer the first solution though.

Thanks.

Christian

Answer 1

Not sure if this would do exactly what you want, but I came across this the other day: SimpleGeo

In their FAQ it says:

SimpleGeo, in its most basic form, indexes data by location using latitude and longitude so that you can easily search for things that are nearby.

They provide a free API for up to 1m calls per month.

Answer 2

I don't think they will meet all your requirements, but GeoNames Web Services are worth a look:

• Find the country for a coordinate:

  http://ws.geonames.org/countryCode?lat=47.03&lng=10.2&radius=100

• Find nearby places:

  http://ws.geonames.org/findNearbyJSON?lat=47.3&lng=9&radius=10

Check the terms for information regarding licence and daily usage.

And of course, you can always have a look at the Google Maps Reverse Geocoder, but I don't think it supports a bounding box or radius parameter:

http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=40.714224,-73.961452&sensor=false

Answer 3

Although not complete for all areas, there is the Openstreetmap (and if it's no complete, you can always add to it!).