An API to send a text string place, and get text strings back of places nearby

Question

Hi, I'm looking for an API or a combination of API's where I can send "Anjuna, India" and get back a list of places nearby. The data is mostly for "third world" countries, less so for Europe/US. Any suggestions/ideas about how to structure this?

Answer 1

You would need place lists with coordinates. Then go trought that list and calculate distance between cities. Then sort results by least distance. I have not done any GPS programming tho.

Answer 2

Do give Yahoo geocoding services a go http://developer.yahoo.com/maps/rest/V1/geocode.html

More here: http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/

Here is the response with your location "Anjuna India" hhttp://local.yahooapis.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=YD-9G7bey8_JXxQP6rxl.fBFGgCdNjoDMACQA--&location=Anjuna+India

Answer 3

You could make use of a couple of Yahoo's Geo APIs in the following manner.

1. Get woeid (Where On Earth Identifier) for input location(s)
2. Determine neighboring places

A quick example, combining those APIs together with Yahoo's YQL would provide neighbor locations for "Anjuna, India" using the query:

SELECT * 
FROM geo.places.neighbors 
WHERE neighbor_woeid IN (
    SELECT woeid 
    FROM geo.places 
    WHERE text="Anjuna, India" 
    LIMIT 1
)

Try this in YQL Console (must be logged in)

Answer 4

The soon to be released Google Places API matches your requirements.