Question

I have an application, and I’m using the Google Javascript Geocoding API to fetch lat/lng for an address.

The code goes something like

geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder()
geocoder.geocode({ 'address': query }, function(results, status) {
    addresses = {};
    $.each(results, function(index, value){
        addresses[index] = {"lat":value.geometry.location.$a,"lng":value.geometry.location.ab}
    })
});

All is fine and dandy, but the thing is that the property names of the location object periodically change. Each time they change, my site breaks.

Twice I’ve had to change my code to accommodate the weird lat/lng property name changes in google’s geolocation api. Originally it was Xa, Ya, then I had to change to Ya, Za, and now its $a, ab. I don’t see any user friendly logic behind these changes.

Does anyone know why these property names change, and/or what strategy can I use to obtain the lat/lng while avoiding the problems caused by these property name changes?

Answer 1

Use the documented properties, they will not change

geometry.location is a google.maps.LatLng object, the documented methods are:

lat()   number  Returns the latitude in degrees.
lng()   number  Returns the longitude in degrees.