GoogleMaps API -address to coordinates (latitude,longitude)

Question

This is driving me crazy. I have deleted this key 1000 times so far. Yesterday it worked like a charm, today not anymore Here is the python code:

from googlemaps         


        

Answer 1

Did some code golfing and ended up with this version. Depending on your need you might want to distinguish some more error conditions.

import urllib, urllib2, json

def decode_address_to_coordinates(address):
        params = {
                'address' : address,
                'sensor' : 'false',
        }  
        url = 'http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?' + urllib.urlencode(params)
        response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
        result = json.load(response)
        try:
                return result['results'][0]['geometry']['location']
        except:
                return None

Answer 2

Since September 2013, Google Maps API v2 no longer works. Here is the code working for API v3 (based on this answer):

import urllib
import simplejson

googleGeocodeUrl = 'http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?'

def get_coordinates(query, from_sensor=False):
    query = query.encode('utf-8')
    params = {
        'address': query,
        'sensor': "true" if from_sensor else "false"
    }
    url = googleGeocodeUrl + urllib.urlencode(params)
    json_response = urllib.urlopen(url)
    response = simplejson.loads(json_response.read())
    if response['results']:
        location = response['results'][0]['geometry']['location']
        latitude, longitude = location['lat'], location['lng']
        print query, latitude, longitude
    else:
        latitude, longitude = None, None
        print query, "<no results>"
    return latitude, longitude

See official documentation for the complete list of parameters and additional information.

Answer 3

Although Google deprecated the V2 calls with googlemaps (which is why you're seeing the broken calls), they just recently announced that they are giving developers a six-month extension (until September 8, 2013) to move from the V2 to V3 API. See Update on Geocoding API V2 for details.

In the meantime, check out pygeocoder as a possible Python V3 solution.