Question

I’m working with the Google Maps Geocoder. I’ve got everything working fine, but I can’t seem to figure out how to ‘traverse’ (parse?) the JSON results.

How can I get the postal code from the Geocoder’s JSON results?

My attempt as been to loop through ‘address_components’, testing each “values” key for an array containing “postal_code”.

So here’s a snippet of what I’ve written so far:

var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
geocoder.geocode({ address : cAddress }, function(results, status) {
    if(status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
        if (status != google.maps.GeocoderStatus.ZERO_RESULTS) {
            var fAddress = results[0].formatted_address;
        var contactLatLng = results[0].geometry.location;

        var postalCode = $.each(results[0].address_components, 
                function(componentIndex, componentValue) {
                    var typesArray = componentValue.types;
            if ($.inArray("postal_code", typesArray)) {
                return componentValue.long_name;
                    }
            })
        }
    }
});

The problem specifically is postalCode is

[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],  
[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]`

Obviously, there is something I’m missing.

For reference, here is the link to Google Maps Geocoder JSON results:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/#JSON

Thanks for any help!
~Amos

Answer 1

Also note, “return” doesn’t work. It’s a asynchronous function. So by the time your function runs, the parent function has finished.

$.each(results[0].address_components, function(componentIndex, componentValue) {
     if ($.inArray("postal_code", componentValue.types)) {
           doSomeThingWithPostcode(componentValue.long_name);
     }
});

So your function must do something explicitly with the result. for example…

function doSomeThingWithPostcode(postcode) {
     $('#input').attr('value',postcode);
}