Re: [tlug] Google Maps API

["Andrew Errington" <a.errington@example.com>]

On Wed, March 12, 2008 17:15, Dave M G wrote:
>
> The technical details on the web site leave me a little confused.

Don't worry.  It's not available here:

"Update: Removed Japan from the list of countries for which we offer
street-level geocoding, as it is not available there.
たいへん申し訳ございません。
m(_ _)m"

Still, there's always diddlefinger.com- maybe you can find out how they do
it.

Geocoding in general is not so hard.  You have to be able to parse user
input into a street address or place name, then look that up somewhere to
return a lat/long.  Once you have the lat/long of a place you can do
interesting things like driving directions, nearest "thing", how many
"things" are at the same place.

To make things easier you can force the users to split up their input. 
Asking them to enter the zip code on its own helps you to narrow down the
search area, and also means that you don't have to guess where the zip
code is in the string they send you.  It would seem that Google (being
Google) doesn't need any help in that regard.

Have fun,

A