reverse geocode a set of co-ordinates

Question

I have sets of co-ordinates in the following format

(-33.9,18.6)

How do I go about getting the name of the nearest town or Country for those co-ords? I'm guessing it will involve Javascript, but am happy to also use PHP if appropriate?

EDIT: Am trying the Google Reverse Geocoder but having trouble with it. The following code is pretty identical to one of their examples but doesn't seem to be running at all... any ideas why?

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
            function reverseGeocode(lat,lon){

                var geocoder = new GClientGeocoder();
                var latlng = new GLatLng(lat, lon);
                geocoder.getLocations(latlng, function(addresses) {
                    alert(addresses);
                });

            }
        </script>

Answer 1

Google maps API has a javascript example.

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#ReverseGeocoding

Answer 2

Have you registered for their API key?

Also are there any specific error messages?

Answer 3

Ok managed to get it working, so here's what I did:

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&amp;amp;v=2&amp;amp;key=INSERTAPIKEYHERE" type="text/javascript"></script>
function reverseGeocode(latitude,longitude){

            var geocoder = new GClientGeocoder();
            var latlng = new GLatLng(latitude, longitude);

            geocoder.getLocations(latlng, function(addresses) {
                var address = addresses.Placemark[0].address;
                var country = addresses.Placemark[0].AddressDetails.Country.CountryName;
                var locality = addresses.Placemark[0].AddressDetails.Country.AdministrativeArea.SubAdministrativeArea.Locality.LocalityName;

                alert(address);
            });
        }

Answer 4

google has a webservice you can call to do (reverse) geocoding, which is much more lightweight then using the full javascript api.

an example with v2: http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=51,4&sensor=false&output=json&key=insert_your_api_key_here&callback=parseme

and with v3: http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=51,4&sensor=false&callback=parseme

in both cases you get a json response (javascript object), the difference being that in the now deprecated v2 you need to provide you api key and you can use a callback (for cross site ajax goodness) which for crying out loud isn't supported in v3 any more (but you don't need an api key any more).

Answer 5

Hi Chris,

I have started learning Javascript and want to know how to send lat and long via javascript to reverse geocode to get the address back an display on the page.

I copied and pasted the code but it did not work even with my key.

Can someone post a copy and paste version with complete code.

Thanks

Paul