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How to get Latitude/Longitude from an address (or Geocoding ) using PHP

24 comments
ican

While Google’s documents for maps API does good job in showing how to get lat/long from an address in JavaScript they do not really show any example of doing the same with PHP.

 

So to make you life simple here is a small script in PHP that does that.

 

 

$geocode=file_get_contents('http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=573/1,+Jangli+Maharaj+Road,+Deccan+Gymkhana,+Pune,+Maharashtra,+India&sensor=false');

$output= json_decode($geocode);

$lat = $output->results[0]->geometry->location->lat;
$long = $output->results[0]->geometry->location->lng;

 

The line above makes a request to Google maps API. Passes the address, and receives the response in JSON format.

The URL has following options

http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/output?parameters

where output can be 1) JSON or 2) XML

For more details about parameters check out the Google’s geocoding documentation.

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Thoughts on This Post (22)

  1. Harish shilamkar

    fanatastic work my friend…. its very usefull blog for all web developers specially PHP developers..u said blog is under construction… is any help required? i know little wordpress..

  2. elali

    Thanx so much, this was extremely helpful

  3. sameer

    Hi, Thanks you very much Have dream day.

  4. Dan

    I have been searching and searching trying to find a simple geocoder means for taking a city and state address and geocoding it for the latitude and longitude in PHP. I was about to give up and use the javascript, but then landed to your wonderful page. Thank you!

  5. Vipul

    Hi, I put this code in one of my php file but its give me “no result”. Any additional js requires to put.Help is appreciate.

  6. AL

    Great piece of codes. But when I tried to pass the address with special characters, for example German characters, it will not return any result. It returned as “Invalid Request”. Anyone knows how to pass special characters in address? Thanks.

    1 Reply Reply
  7. surendra

    pass the special characters in UTF-8 encoding.

  8. Dhanesh

    How can i identify a specific location is included in a kml file of google earth?.Is any code for that using php

  9. Mike

    Thank you so much for this code. After spending so long I managed to find your site and your example works within seconds! Amazing and thanks again.

  10. BobS

    Unfortunately – it gives incorrect coordinates… I was hoping that it would be accurate!

  11. Vaishakh

    Great work dude , however Google Maps has a request rate of only 2000 queries a day . I have written a similar code that gives me a geocoding rate of 50,000 queries a day . You can get the code at http://googlelatiude.blogspot.com/2011/04/geocode-address.html

  12. Vinay

    Thanks @vaishakh your blog was really helpful .

  13. Vaishakh

    @Dhanesh this may be of help to you http://bestfromgoogle.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-my-maps-kml-integration-for-your_4609.html

  14. nmnm

    $geocode=file_get_contents(‘http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=573/1,+Jangli+Maharaj+Road,+Deccan+Gymkhana,+Pune,+Maharashtra,+India&sensor=false’); $output= json_decode($geocode); $lat = $output->results[0]->geometry->location->lat; $long = $output->results[0]->geometry->location->lng;

  15. Johnson Obaro Isreal

    I paste The Code Into my PHP file How to Get Your Location Lat and Long . But It Did work It Shows Error= Fatal error: Call to undefined function json_decode() in C:apachefriendsxampphtdocsstudentPortaltest.php on line 4 please tell me what is wrong.

  16. sigristr

    Thanks. this is a very neat bit of code, though I had problems which led me to exploring parsing json – ruthlessly exploiting my php error log. After changing the file to a local one (generated by calling the google site from a browser with the request) to prove the principle, I discovered that, in my case, the single quotes round the URL had to be double. The hour was not wasted, as I learnt a lot abour json!

  17. rock

    how can we show the location on google map when visitor click on the address(address is coming from DB).when visitor click on the address,location should be shown on google map.Help is appreciated.

  18. Stephane

    When i run this code on localhost there is no problem but when i put in online i’ve got the status: query_limit. in the google documentation i read that it only works with a google maps… someone nows more about it?

  19. Sandeep Yadav

    Hi, I tried this code to get latitude and longitude by address but it returns null in print_r($geocode). $geocode=file_get_contents(‘http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=573/1,+Jangli+Maharaj+Road,+Deccan+Gymkhana,+Pune,+Maharashtra,+India&sensor=false’); When i run url direct in browser its return array with values. In my server allow_url_fopen is set to ON. Please give some suggestion what to do? Thanks

    1 Reply Reply
  20. Mujeeb

    i think your code is divided into two lines in editor , Please make sure the whole URL appear in one line in your code. Thanks

  21. Sandeep

    Hi Check this script, that directly convert address to map using php. Check out this : http://tutorials4u.in/google-map-using-address-php/

  22. Mujeeb

    Hello Everyone, i am using above code and is working fine without app key but when i put my app key in URL , it does not return latLong . Please somebody help me with this. Thanks