how to convert from longitude and latitude to country or city?

Question

I need to convert longitude and latitude coordinates to either country or city, is there an example of this in python?

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I use Google's API.

from urllib2 import urlopen
import json
def getplace(lat, lon):
    url = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?"
    url += "latlng=%s,%s&sensor=false" % (lat, lon)
    v = urlopen(url).read()
    j = json.loads(v)
    components = j['results'][0]['address_components']
    country = town = None
    for c in components:
        if "country" in c['types']:
            country = c['long_name']
        if "postal_town" in c['types']:
            town = c['long_name']
    return town, country


print(getplace(51.1, 0.1))
print(getplace(51.2, 0.1))
print(getplace(51.3, 0.1))

Output:

(u'Hartfield', u'United Kingdom')
(u'Edenbridge', u'United Kingdom')
(u'Sevenoaks', u'United Kingdom')