Geocoding and driving time APIs?
October 20, 2006 9:29 AM Subscribe
Geocoding and finding driving time between geocoded addresses: best free APIs?
I'll have several thousand addresses in a database. For each address, I want to geocode it, that is, find its latitude and longitude, and put that back into the database.
For all addresses within n statute miles of another address, I'll want to calculate approximate driving time between those addresses. Figuring n to be less than 5, that's still quite a few driving time lookups. I may or may not want to actually get driving directions.
I know how to calculate distance between two lat/lon pairs, so I don't need an algorithm.
What I do need is to figure out the best free APIs to geocode and calculate driving time.
Google Maps, the perl module Geo::Coder::US,, MapQuest? What should I use?
This is going to have to be quick and dirty, a very time sensitive, so my preferred API langauges would be what I'm most conformable coding in. In order of most preferred to least preferred, that's probably: C++, Java, Javascript. I can get around in Perl and figure out PHP.
Best case might be to get the Geo::Coder::US database into SQL, but that may be asking too much.
I'll have several thousand addresses in a database. For each address, I want to geocode it, that is, find its latitude and longitude, and put that back into the database.
For all addresses within n statute miles of another address, I'll want to calculate approximate driving time between those addresses. Figuring n to be less than 5, that's still quite a few driving time lookups. I may or may not want to actually get driving directions.
I know how to calculate distance between two lat/lon pairs, so I don't need an algorithm.
What I do need is to figure out the best free APIs to geocode and calculate driving time.
Google Maps, the perl module Geo::Coder::US,, MapQuest? What should I use?
This is going to have to be quick and dirty, a very time sensitive, so my preferred API langauges would be what I'm most conformable coding in. In order of most preferred to least preferred, that's probably: C++, Java, Javascript. I can get around in Perl and figure out PHP.
Best case might be to get the Geo::Coder::US database into SQL, but that may be asking too much.
This program from the google programming contest is in Python, but might be helpful anyway. In any case, the readme has a bunch of information about grabbing TIGER data.
posted by inkyz at 10:24 AM on October 20, 2006
posted by inkyz at 10:24 AM on October 20, 2006
What hades said: the code to do this stuff is hard to get right and you really need a high quality dataset to properly do driving directions. Even if you found a free solution I doubt you'd get passable results. These problems are hard.
(Disclaimer: I work for a company that does exactly all the stuff you need, and more, with APIs, but you gotta pay).
posted by chuma at 11:51 AM on October 20, 2006
(Disclaimer: I work for a company that does exactly all the stuff you need, and more, with APIs, but you gotta pay).
posted by chuma at 11:51 AM on October 20, 2006
I've had good experience with the Ultimate Geocoder class in PHP. It keeps checking different services until one returns a result. But I agree with hades that you probably won't find a free API for driving directions or time estimates.
posted by scottreynen at 12:01 PM on October 20, 2006
posted by scottreynen at 12:01 PM on October 20, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by orthogonality at 9:43 AM on October 20, 2006