Using the Google Places API to get nearby cities for a given place
I am trying to write a Java application that, given a city and a radius, returns all the nearby cities. I thought the Google Maps API would be able to do this, but I am getting no luck with the Places API, it just returns points of interest (e.g. restaurants, ...). Is there a way of doing this with the google API or is there some other API (or way of doing this) that you would recommend?
Answer
I've written a code snippet that allows you to retrieve all nearby cities by combining the Google Maps Geocoding API and GeoNames.org API (besides a file_get_contents your could also do a cURL request).
/*
* Get cities based on city name and radius in KM
*/
// get geocode object as array from The Google Maps Geocoding API
$geocodeObject = json_decode(file_get_contents('https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address={CITY NAME},{COUNTRY CODE}'), true);
// get latitude and longitude from geocode object
$latitude = $geocodeObject['results'][0]['geometry']['location']['lat'];
$longitude = $geocodeObject['results'][0]['geometry']['location']['lng'];
// set request options
$responseStyle = 'short'; // the length of the response
$citySize = 'cities15000'; // the minimal number of citizens a city must have
$radius = 30; // the radius in KM
$maxRows = 30; // the maximum number of rows to retrieve
$username = '{YOUR USERNAME}'; // the username of your GeoNames account
// get nearby cities based on range as array from The GeoNames API
$nearbyCities = json_decode(file_get_contents('http://api.geonames.org/findNearbyPlaceNameJSON?lat='.$latitude.'&lng='.$longitude.'&style='.$responseStyle.'&cities='.$citySize.'&radius='.$radius.'&maxRows='.$maxRows.'&username='.$username, true));
// foreach nearby city get city details
foreach($nearbyCities->geonames as $cityDetails)
{
// do something per nearby city
}
be carefull with your requests amount because the API's are limited
For more information about the API's visit the following url's: