Working with the Google Location API

Question

Forgive me for my ignorance, but after several hours of searching, I\'m having little luck.

Anyway, I am attempting to write a small desktop application that will allow

Answer 1

The Geocode API is rather simple, to get lat/lon from the api you only need to 3 params: output, sensor and address.

output the output format you want, json or xml (IIRC)

sensor should be a boolean indicating weather or not the value comes from a sensor such as a GPS chip.

address should be the address (don't forget to url encode it) you wish to geocode.

This is an example, where I geocode my office address, and get JSON in response: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?sensor=false&address=1+Maritime+Plaza+San+Francisco+CA

If you navigate to that you should see something like:

{
  "status": "OK",
  "results": [ {
    "types": [ "street_address" ],
    "formatted_address": "1 Maritime Plaza, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA",
    "address_components": [ {
      "long_name": "1",
      "short_name": "1",
      "types": [ "street_number" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "Maritime Plaza",
      "short_name": "Maritime Plaza",
      "types": [ "route" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "San Francisco",
      "short_name": "San Francisco",
      "types": [ "locality", "political" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "San Francisco",
      "short_name": "San Francisco",
      "types": [ "administrative_area_level_3", "political" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "San Francisco",
      "short_name": "San Francisco",
      "types": [ "administrative_area_level_2", "political" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "California",
      "short_name": "CA",
      "types": [ "administrative_area_level_1", "political" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "United States",
      "short_name": "US",
      "types": [ "country", "political" ]
    }, {
      "long_name": "94111",
      "short_name": "94111",
      "types": [ "postal_code" ]
    } ],
    "geometry": {
      "location": {
        "lat": 37.7953907,
        "lng": -122.3991803
      },
      "location_type": "ROOFTOP",
      "viewport": {
        "southwest": {
          "lat": 37.7922431,
          "lng": -122.4023279
        },
        "northeast": {
          "lat": 37.7985383,
          "lng": -122.3960327
        }
      }
    }
  } ]
}

If you take the lat/lon provided and place it on a map you see a pointer on my office building.