Question

My Application is a php program, and I only have the address name, instead of the coordination on the map. But I find that the google map API requires the coordination to pin the address. How can I do so? Thank you.

I have the address:’觀塘%20牛頭角%20創業街%202號%20美亞工業大廈%202樓%202A%20202室’.
It can be search, and pin on the google map application, but when I using the google api to do geocoding, it shows me ZERO_RESULT:

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=%E8%A7%80%E5%A1%98%20%E7%89%9B%E9%A0%AD%E8%A7%92%20%E5%89%B5%E6%A5%AD%E8%A1%97%202%E8%99%9F%20%E7%BE%8E%E4%BA%9E%E5%B7%A5%E6%A5%AD%E5%A4%A7%E5%BB%88&sensor=false

Answer 1

Just convert the address into lat/lon first. You can either do this using javascript or you can use PHP (and cache it for later). Here is a simplified function to do that for you

function postcode_to_latlon($postcode){

    $xml = simplexml_load_file('http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?sensor=false&address='.$postcode);

    $lat = $xml->result->geometry->location->lat;
    $lon = $xml->result->geometry->location->lng;

    return array($lat, $lon);

}

This process is called geocoding.