R help - Mar 2010 - Retrieving latitude and longitude via Google Maps API

Does anyone have any experience retrieving latitutde and longitude for
an address from the Google Maps API?  

I'd like to have an R script that submits a street address, city, state,
and zip code and returns the coordinates.  So far, I've been submitting
the coordinates from another program, then loading the coordinates in R
and merging them back into the data frame I want to use.  It'd be nice
to be able to do it all in one script, but I'm not comprehending the API
thing very well.

I'm using R 2.9.1 on Windows XP.  Any suggestions or pointers?

Benjamin

 
 
  Benjamin Nutter |  Biostatistician  |  Quantitative Health Sciences
  Cleveland Clinic  |  9500 Euclid Ave.   |  Cleveland, OH 44195  |
(216) 445-1365
	

==================================
P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

Cleveland Clinic is ranked one of the top hospitals
in America by U.S.News & World Report (2009).  
Visit us online at http://www.clevelandclinic.org for
a complete listing of our services, staff and
locations.


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Benjamin -
    Perhaps this will get you started:
> addr = '1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC'
> url = paste('http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?address=',
+             
addr,'&sensor=false',sep='')
> library(XML)
> doc = xmlTreeParse(url)
> root = xmlRoot(doc)
> lat =
xmlValue(root[['result']][['geometry']][['location']][['lat']])
> long =
xmlValue(root[['result']][['geometry']][['location']][['lng']])
> lat 
[1] "38.8976500"
> long
[1] "-77.0356669"

 					- Phil Spector
 					 Statistical Computing Facility
 					 Department of Statistics
 					 UC Berkeley
 					 spector at stat.berkeley.edu



On Tue, 16 Mar 2010, Nutter, Benjamin wrote:
> Does anyone have any experience retrieving latitutde and longitude for
> an address from the Google Maps API?
>
> I'd like to have an R script that submits a street address, city,
state,
> and zip code and returns the coordinates.  So far, I've been submitting
> the coordinates from another program, then loading the coordinates in R
> and merging them back into the data frame I want to use.  It'd be nice
> to be able to do it all in one script, but I'm not comprehending the
API
> thing very well.
>
> I'm using R 2.9.1 on Windows XP.  Any suggestions or pointers?
>
> Benjamin
>
>
>
>  Benjamin Nutter |  Biostatistician  |  Quantitative Health Sciences
>  Cleveland Clinic  |  9500 Euclid Ave.   |  Cleveland, OH 44195  |
> (216) 445-1365
>
>
> ==================================>
> P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
>
> Cleveland Clinic is ranked one of the top hospitals
> in America by U.S.News & World Report (2009).
> Visit us online at http://www.clevelandclinic.org for
> a complete listing of our services, staff and
> locations.
>
>
> Confidentiality Note:  This message is intended for use\...{{dropped:13}}
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>

You may want to look at http://www.openstreetmap.org/ or
http://maps.cloudmade.com/ instead of google maps.  I don't know if they
give the same detail/searches, but open source sites tend to be easier to work
with and have fewer restrictions on use.  While I like the google maps, I tend
to not use them for anything other than personal browsing since I am not sure
about the legal/copyright issues.

Hope this helps, 

-- 
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Nutter, Benjamin
> Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 1:42 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Retrieving latitude and longitude via Google Maps API
> 
> Does anyone have any experience retrieving latitutde and longitude for
> an address from the Google Maps API?
> 
> I'd like to have an R script that submits a street address, city,
> state,
> and zip code and returns the coordinates.  So far, I've been submitting
> the coordinates from another program, then loading the coordinates in R
> and merging them back into the data frame I want to use.  It'd be nice
> to be able to do it all in one script, but I'm not comprehending the
> API
> thing very well.
> 
> I'm using R 2.9.1 on Windows XP.  Any suggestions or pointers?
> 
> Benjamin
> 
> 
> 
>   Benjamin Nutter |  Biostatistician  |  Quantitative Health Sciences
>   Cleveland Clinic  |  9500 Euclid Ave.   |  Cleveland, OH 44195  |
> (216) 445-1365
> 
> 
> ==================================> 
> P Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
> 
> Cleveland Clinic is ranked one of the top hospitals
> in America by U.S.News & World Report (2009).
> Visit us online at http://www.clevelandclinic.org for
> a complete listing of our services, staff and
> locations.
> 
> 
> Confidentiality Note:  This message is intended for
> use\...{{dropped:13}}
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-
> guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.