views:

360

answers:

1

Hey guys, throughout google's GoogleMap API, the standard coordinates formating is Latitude first, then Longitude, i.e:

-33.4487470,151.3425040

Why is it that, in GeoCode's XML response, the data is backwards in the coordinates node? i.e:

<coordinates> 151.3425040,-33.4487470,0</coordinates>

Also, could anyone shed some light on the ExtendedData nodes, and the info within? i.e:

<ExtendedData> 
  <LatLonBox north="-9.2106000" south="-44.7779000" east="159.2029000" west="110.8740000" /> 
</ExtendedData>

a bit of a random question I know, but why would Google swap these values around in the coordinates node??

cheers

andy

+1  A: 

LatLonBox is the definition for a bounding box - i.e. a rectangle that encompasses a given set of points. The rectangle is defined by two latitudes (north, south) and two longitudes (east, west).

See: latlonbox in the kml reference

diciu
cool, thanks diciu. Any ideas why the coordinates data is backwards though? cheers
andy
Tendency nowadays is to use lat-long because standards list them in this order. However, the KML format is fairly old (from the Keyhole days) so I imagine they used long-lat and now they can't change because of backward compatibility. See also http://tinyurl.com/c9ll5z
diciu
awesome, thanks for your help. I did try and get info on that XML, but I was looking in the wrong place. I was looking in the GeoCode service documentation, as opposed to the KML reference. My bad, thanks again
andy