{"id":296,"date":"2005-12-01T21:48:59","date_gmt":"2005-12-02T03:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=296"},"modified":"2005-12-01T21:48:59","modified_gmt":"2005-12-02T03:48:59","slug":"set-up-your-own-geocode-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/296","title":{"rendered":"Set up your own geocode service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update, 2\/9\/06: this post only outlines how to set up a geocode engine for the United States. I don’t know how to do it for any other countries.<\/em><\/p>\n

Geocoder.us<\/a> provides you with a REST based geocoding service, but their commercial services are not free<\/a>. Luckily, the data they use is public domain, and there are some helpful perl modules which make setting up your own service a snap. This post steps you through setting up your own geocoding service (for the USA), based on public domain census data. You end up with a Google map of any address in the USA, but of course the lat\/long you find could be used with any mapping service.<\/p>\n

First, get the data.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
$ wget -r -np -w 5 --random-wait ftp:\/\/www2.census.gov\/geo\/tiger\/tiger2004se\/ <\/pre>\n
<\/code><\/div>\n
If you only want the data for one state, put the two digit state code at the end of the ftp:\/\/ url above (eg ftp:\/\/www2.census.gov\/geo\/tiger\/tiger2004se\/CO\/<\/code> for Colorado’s data).<\/p>\n
Second, install the needed perl modules.  (I did this on cygwin and linux, and it was a snap both times.  See this page for instructions on installing to a nonstandard location with the CPAN module<\/a> and don’t forget to set your PERL5LIB<\/code> variable.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$ perl -MCPAN -e shell<\/code>\ncpan> install S\/SD\/SDERLE\/Geo-Coder-US-1.00.tar.gz<\/code>\ncpan> install S\/SM\/SMPETERS\/Archive-Zip-1.16.tar.gz<\/code>\n<\/pre>\n
<\/code><\/div>\n
Third, import the tiger data (this code comes from the Geo::Coder::US perldoc<\/a>, and took 4.5 hours to execute on a 2.6ghz pentium4 with 1 gig of memory).  Note that if you install via the CPAN module as shown above, the import_tiger_zip.pl<\/code> file is under ~\/.cpan\/<\/code>:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
$ find www2.census.gov\/geo\/tiger\/tiger2004se\/CO\/ -name \\*.zip \n  | xargs -n1 perl \/path\/to\/import_tiger_zip.pl geocoder.db<\/pre>\n
<\/code><\/div>\n
Now you’re ready to find the lat\/long of an address.  Find one that you’d like to map, like say, the Colorado Dept of Revenue: 1375 Sherman St, Denver, CO<\/a>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n$ perl -MGeo::Coder::US -e 'Geo::Coder::US->set_db( \"geocoder.db\" );\nmy($res) = Geo::Coder::US->geocode(\"1375 Sherman St, Denver, CO\" ); \nprint \"$res->{lat}, $ res->{long}\\n\\n\";'\n\n39.691702, -104.985361\n<\/pre>\n
<\/code><\/div>\n
And then you can map it with Google maps<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Now, why wouldn’t you just use Yahoo!’s service (which provides geocoding and mapping APIs)?  Perhaps you like Google’s maps better.  Perhaps you don’t want to use a mapping service at all, you just want to find lat\/longs without reaching out over the network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Update, 2\/9\/06: this post only outlines how to set up a geocode engine for the United States. I don’t know how to do it for any other countries. Geocoder.us provides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}