geocode-vs

geocode-vs

Purpose

Getting a unified way to access the most important geocoding APIs (Nominatim, Google, MapQuest, HERE, OpenCage) to compare and evaluate.

Usage

Just run the script by providing a .txt file with each location to geocode on a new line, e.g.:

cat places.txt  
Berlin  
Amsterdam  
Montpellier
...
python geocode-vs.py places.txt

The script will access API.json for API keys (if neccessary) and will output cities.csv as well as outliers.txt. Don't forget to update your API.json to get access to the MapQuest, HERE and OpenCage geocoding results. The outliers.txt is some kind of shoot from the hip for evaluating the quality of the data. Outliers will be summarized in the console and simply mean that the coordinates for a location are not within the standard deviation of all 5 providers. This is by no means a real measure for quality, just a hint or a reminder to implement some real quality measurement.

Files

API.json - credentials for the geocoding APIs
cities.csv - main output; CSV with header; example results included
cities.txt - input file; each location on new line; examples included
console_output.txt - example for console output
outliers.txt - supposed outliers

Version

• querying APIs works
• generating a CSV works
• getting (somewhat questionable) descriptive statistics works

ToDo:

• well-thought quality control
• optimized output
• arguments, e.g. choice of providers
• error/exception handling
• simplification/refactoring