GEOPY: Rockin’ out geocoding for Python
November 12th, 2008 by
gloriajw
*waving*
I have a bit of a breather between contracts, so I’m back from a writing hiatus to show you more nifty Python tools and juicy goodness.
This is yet another great example of Python’s elegance and ease of use:
http://exogen.case.edu/projects/geopy/
It doesn’t just geocode. It gives you a common API to just about all of the publicly accessible URL-based geocode services. The web page labels which ones require a key for access, and which ones do not. Beautiful!
The library is also able to calculate distances using several different distance approximation formulae, as well as parse out and reformat geographical data. Now this is some nifty py-candy, eh?
Nice Job Brian, you rocked this out.
My only gripes are not with this tool at all, but with geocoding in general:
1: Where to get accurate, free IP address geocoding?
2: Why isn’t this data free for download, damn it? What if I want to use a cross section of it, and store it in my own database, without paying a fortune for it? One day, will Open Street Map be the source for Open Source geocode data which is freely downloadable, thus eliminating the 1000 queries per day limit?
Maybe we should all join forces, and store the results from 1000 queries per day per person, and build this database ourselves? Hmmm…
Gloria
PS: The geopy project has a code sprint scheduled for this Sunday, Nov. 16. Join in!
