I am looking for an alternative to Google's reverse geocoding service.

In short, I want a user to click on a map and pre-fill a form with an address for a particular latitude and longitude. Similary to this this example.

EDIT

I am using OpenStreetMaps and according to Google's terms I am not allowed to user their geocoding services without displaying them on Google Maps.

I am looking for an alternative to Google's reverse geocoding service.

In short, I want a user to click on a map and pre-fill a form with an address for a particular latitude and longitude. Similary to this this example.

EDIT

I am using OpenStreetMaps and according to Google's terms I am not allowed to user their geocoding services without displaying them on Google Maps.

• javascript
• service
• geocoding
• reverse-geocoding

Share Improve this question Follow edited Mar 17, 2012 at 4:26 howtodothis asked Mar 17, 2012 at 4:01 howtodothishowtodothis 1,31544 gold badges1818 silver badges3131 bronze badges 3

• 2 Can you clarify why Google's service won't work for you? It's hard for people to make good remendations without knowing what your actual requirements are. – Cascabel Commented Mar 17, 2012 at 4:02
• 1 I am not allowed to use Google's geocoding services without displaying them on their maps. I use OpenStreetMaps - developers.google./maps/documentation/geocoding/#Limits – howtodothis Commented Mar 17, 2012 at 4:17
• Actually quite interesting question, I would also like to know what other services provide similar features. – Tadeck Commented Mar 17, 2012 at 4:30

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2 Answers 2

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There are plenty of geolocation APIs out there. If you need lat/long -> geolocation info (such as city, country ...) correspondence you should look at the Yahoo PlaceFinder API which implements an API call returning informations based on a lat/lon pair (http://developer.yahoo./geo/placefinder/).

However most of those APIs are free but limited by the number of API call.

What you can also do is using the IP address of a user to locate him, it will work in most cases since users using proxys or VPNs are few. Then you will be able to use a free service such as http://ipinfodb./ip_location_api.php or http://www.iplocationtools./api.html to make a correspondence between the IP address and the geolocation infos. There are even free databases you can easily find making this correspondence if you don't want to rely on third-party APIs.

Hope this will help you.

This question is similar.

It remends Nominatim, a service run by an OSM volunteer (and if you have heavy load, you can download the relevant parts of the OSM database and run your own local instance).