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Geocoding & APIs

MaptimeSEA

3/4/2015

Welcome!

Why geocode?

you have an address, but want coordinates

Geocoding has been around

where do we geocode?

desktop GIS much?

Why might the desktop approach be problematic for the web?

So what is

API?

Application Programming Interface

But what do they actually do?

they provide a means of communication on the web

in our case, an API allows us to send a query, and get back data that matches that query

let's look at an example

http://api.example.com?query=hello&format=json break it down

http://api.example.com?query=hello&format=json

api.example.com is where we find the API

http://api.example.com?query=hello&format=json

? indicates parameters will follow

this is just a convention of communication on the web

http://api.example.com?query=hello&format=json

query=hello is a parameter, query which for this request, equals hello

http://api.example.com?query=hello&format=json

& delimits parameters

http://api.example.com?query=hello&format=json

format=json is another parameter, that basically says, "hey send me some json!"

Build it

http://maptimesea.github.io/2015/03/03/gecoding-api.html