Question

I’m using this gem called Geocoder that’s part of Ruby on rails. You can choose which geocoding service to use and I chose Google Maps. Now it states in the Advanced Geocoding section that if I’m familiar with the geocoding service I can actually parse and get more data for my columns in my database such as, city, state, country, etc.

My question is, where can I see the list of all the things Google can parse for me? I want to add to my database more info such as the province, prefecture, etc. Where do I look?

Answer 1

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/

Check out some of the sample JSON/XML output on this page. As you can see, you can get street address, postal code, locality, city, country, region and any other available information.

{
   "results" : [
      {
         "address_components" : [
            {
               "long_name" : "1600",
               "short_name" : "1600",
               "types" : [ "street_number" ]
            },
            {
               "long_name" : "Amphitheatre Pkwy",
               "short_name" : "Amphitheatre Pkwy",
               "types" : [ "route" ]
            },
            {
               "long_name" : "Mountain View",
               "short_name" : "Mountain View",
               "types" : [ "locality", "political" ]
            },
            {
               "long_name" : "Santa Clara",
               "short_name" : "Santa Clara",
               "types" : [ "administrative_area_level_2", "political" ]
            },
            {
               "long_name" : "California",
               "short_name" : "CA",
               "types" : [ "administrative_area_level_1", "political" ]
            },
            {
               "long_name" : "United States",
               "short_name" : "US",
               "types" : [ "country", "political" ]
            },
            {
               "long_name" : "94043",
               "short_name" : "94043",
               "types" : [ "postal_code" ]
            }
         ],
         "formatted_address" : "1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA",
         "geometry" : {
            "location" : {
               "lat" : 37.42291810,
               "lng" : -122.08542120
            },
            "location_type" : "ROOFTOP",
            "viewport" : {
               "northeast" : {
                  "lat" : 37.42426708029149,
                  "lng" : -122.0840722197085
               },
               "southwest" : {
                  "lat" : 37.42156911970850,
                  "lng" : -122.0867701802915
               }
            }
         },
         "types" : [ "street_address" ]
      }
   ],
   "status" : "OK"
}