Is Google Maps blocking me?
I'm programming web application that works with Google Maps and I need to generate PDF output so I decided to use static API. My application will be using set of 1500 small map images (100*100px). I dont want to ask Google for every image thousand times a day so I wrote a script to download all images and save it to my server where images will be used from. After downloading 300 images my server gets this error:
Warning: readfile(http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/staticmap?size=100x100&maptype=roadmap&markers=icon:http://mediup.martinstrouhal.cz/arrs/210.png%7Cshadow:false%7C50.078522,14.436551&sensor=false&zoom=16) [function.readfile]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden
Does this mean that google is blocking me permanently?
Answer
You are missing the API key.
Without including your API key The Streetview Images API is throttled by IP to 1000 images per 24 hours and 5 images per minute, both of which you are likely to hit if you do not use the key. With the key you can pull 25000 images / day
Format should be: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/streetview?size=400x400&location=40.720032,-73.988354&sensor=false&key=API_KEY
Docs for streetview include how to get an API key. https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/streetview/?csw=1