Question

I am attempting to set up a script that uses Google’s Geocoding service. However, I have encountered a strange problem when making requests. Here is my simplified request:

<?php
$xml = simplexml_load_file("http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?output=xml&key=MY_API_KEY&q=1600+Pennsylvania+Avenue+Northwest+Washington+DC+20500");
print_r($xml);
?>

Here is the output from that code:

SimpleXMLElement Object ( [Response] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [Status] => SimpleXMLElement Object ( [code] => 620 [request] => geocode ) ) )

It is returning the error code 620, which means I am making requests too rapidly. However, I am only making a single request and I have not even come close to my request limit. What is even more strange is that when I access the URL directly, it returns the XML response without any trouble at all. It is like there is some kind of firewall/permissions setting somewhere that is blocking the correct response from my PHP script. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Fyi, my final solution was to rewrite the script using Javascript and doing everything client side instead of server side. I’m still not quite sure what was wrong with the request I was making from my php script, but at least I accomplished what I needed. Thanks for all the suggestions!