Using Google Maps geocoder from Python with urllib2

Question

I\'m trying to use the Google Maps geocoder with Python and JSON, but keep being told I have a bad request:

add = \"Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA\"
ge         


        

Answer 1

You need some URL quoting encoding, this works:

import urllib2
import pprint
import json
add = "Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA"
add = urllib2.quote(add)
geocode_url = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=%s&sensor=false&region=uk" % add
print geocode_url
req = urllib2.urlopen(geocode_url)
jsonResponse = json.loads(req.read())
pprint.pprint(jsonResponse) 

The line add = urllib2.quote(add) is the important point. If you have non latin characters be advised that the google API needs UTF-8 encoding.