Purely as a thought-experiment (cough), a wee ruby script that you
might be able to adapt.
#!/usr/local/bin/ruby
#
# Example
# >./pofinder G38DN
# >55.866061 -4.273608
#
require 'rubygems'
require 'mechanize'
agent = WWW::Mechanize.new
postcode = ARGV[0]
begin
gmap_url = "http://maps.google.com/maps?q="+postcode.gsub(' ', "+")
gmap = agent.get(gmap_url).root.to_s;
rescue
puts "Cannot derive coordinates for that postcode"
end
if matches = /lat:\s*(-?[0-9\.]+),\s*lng:\s*(-?[0-9\.]+)/.match(gmap)
latitude = matches[1]
longitude = matches[2]
printf("%s %s\n", latitude, longitude)
end
On 16 Nov 2006, at 23:00, Dave Cross wrote:
I've got a couple of hundred full UK postcodes that I want to
convert to lat/long values. And I thought to myself 1/ Postcoder
would be the perfect tool to do that with and 2/ when I was working
on Postcoder earlier this year there was lots of talk about
releasing the API as part
of Backstage. But there were licensing problems.
So I just thought I'd ask if those licensing problems were any
nearer to being solved and whether the Postcoder API was any closer
to being made public.
Or, failing that, what other tools do people use to convert
postcodes to lat/long? It seems to me that the Google Maps GeoCoder
object doesn't understand UK postcodes.
Cheers,
Dave...
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