Google Geocoding API with PHP

<pre>
<?php

function lookup($string){

   $string = str_replace (" ", "+", urlencode($string));
   $details_url = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=".$string."&sensor=false";

   $ch = curl_init();
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $details_url);
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
   $response = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);

   // If Status Code is ZERO_RESULTS, OVER_QUERY_LIMIT, REQUEST_DENIED or INVALID_REQUEST
   if ($response['status'] != 'OK') {
   	return null;
   }

   print_r($response);
   $geometry = $response['results'][0]['geometry'];

	$longitude = $geometry['location']['lat'];
	$latitude = $geometry['location']['lng'];

	$array = array(
		'latitude' => $geometry['location']['lng'],
		'longitude' => $geometry['location']['lat'],
		'location_type' => $geometry['location_type'],
	);

	return $array;

}

$city = 'San Francisco, USA';

$array = lookup($city);
print_r($array);

?>
</pre>

6 Comments

• 
  John Doish September 20, 2012 at 8:27 pm

  $array = array(
  ‘latitude’ => $geometry['location']['lng'],
  ‘longitude’ => $geometry['location']['lat'],
  ‘location_type’ => $geometry['location_type'],
  );

  I think you need to reverse the longitude and latitude assignments in the array.

  Otherwise, great work!!!

  Reply
  • 
    Andrew Kirkpatrick September 21, 2012 at 11:20 am

    Haha I didn’t even notice that, which is odd as I must’ve fixed it in the production code I used it in! Thanks

    Reply
  • 
    relish27 April 16, 2013 at 10:57 pm

    Good catch! And, Andrew, thank you! This is so great.

    Reply
• French dataset: population and GPS coordinates | Freakonometrics February 14, 2013 at 12:42 am

  [...] location. GPS coordinates were extracted from Google, using the following php file, inspired by http://www.andrew-kirkpatrick.com/ on Google geocoding api with php webpage. Population was interpolated from INSEE’s datasets, [...]

  Reply
• 
  Jan February 16, 2013 at 4:29 pm

  Thank you for this piece of code! I planned to use it for a project, but since Google wants to force me to use the data from its Geocoding API in a Google Map, I had to change my plans. That’s too restrictive.

  Reply
• 
  Josua Sihombing February 18, 2013 at 10:19 am

  This is really useful.

  Btw, besides the above statement, also this one:
  $longitude = $geometry['location']['lat'];
  $latitude = $geometry['location']['lng'];
  can be removed.

  Thanks for posting this, make it easy for me.

  Reply