| Address Look-up Made Easy – The MetroGIS Geocoder Project |
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Do you need address spatial look-up in your application?
- MetroGIS has sponsored development of a Web Service that takes Address or Intersection requests and returns closest matches with their latitude-longitude.
- Use this service to add geocoding to a web map or any application that needs spatial info for addresses, without having to store your own local copy of the underlying data. Look-up by:
- street address
- intersection (2 street names)
- landmark name
Mpls/St.Paul Metro Area Geocoder Service:
MN Statewide Service? - If there is enough demand, a second service could be set up to use the larger TLG street data set, or other statewide or larger-area sets of streets, parcels or points as available.
The service uses Open Source "PAGC" geocoder software (www.pagcgeo.org) first developed in Canada for batch geocoding of national datasets. MetroGIS funded revision of PAGC for a multi-user environment and for use as a Web Service. For more information on MetroGIS Geocoder Project organization and funding, see the following:
Phase I - Initial Development 2007-2008:
Phase II - Enhancements 2009:
- Metro Geocoder Web Service takes urlencoded Address or Intersection requests and returns closest matches with latitude-longitude, in XML, CSV or JSON.
- Click here to see a sample urlencoded request and XML response
- Try out addresses and see responses with the Sample Form Using Geocoder
- These technical documents describe details of sending a request and handling a response:
- The Metropolitan Council is creating a SOAP wrapper to make it easier to use the geocoder in dotNet.
Contact Matt McGuire.
- Scott County has created a tool to allow easy use of the geocoder service within ArcMap.
- Have you made it easier to use the Geocoder in some kind of application? Let us know and we’ll add a link here.
- Public sites currently using the Metro Geocoder Web Service:
- Metro Mosquito Control web map (Developer: Houston Engineering)
- DNR LandView (Developer: Craig Perrault, MnDNR)
- This is open source software (LGPL), available for free from MetroGIS,
Download (4.33 MB) (or available from www.pagcgeo.org).
- The MetroGIS Geocoder Service package includes archives and files necessary to build and install the software from source, and an installer that contains pre-compiled binaries and files for a Microsoft Windows installation.
- Package includes full documentation for setting up your own service.
- Software is intended for Windows and Linux systems running the Apache webserver, but there is nothing to preclude its use on other systems or webservers.
- Local installation of the complete geocoder software also requires the gcc C compiler, MINGW (for Windows), Berkeley db (4), and Fastcgi Apache module and library (if fastcgi chosen; will also function as a CGI program)
- Local installation requires your own copy of base datasets (shapesets).
- Want to improve the MetroGIS Geocoder Service? Contact the Geocoder Team (Nancy Read at nancread@mmcd.org)
- Want to extend the capabilities of the PAGC software? You can sponsor development projects or modify the code yourself.
- PAGC is open source software, written in fully commented ANSI C, and covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License.
- To sign up for the PAGC list or contact current developers, see www.pagcgeo.org
Q:
A:
sample urlencoded request and XML response
Example: Data Request (urlencoded) – try this link to see an XML response
This link sends the following text:
http://geoserver.state.mn.us/geocoder/geocode_response?
methodName=GeocodeRequest&Version=1.1&CountryCode=US&
maximumResponses=10&CompleteAddressNumber=2099&
CompleteStreetName=UNIVERSITY%20AVE%20W&PlaceName=Saint%20Paul&
ZipCode=55104%203431&ResponseFormat=XML
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