GeoNames Forum

I've noticed a serious bug in hierarchy which probably makes impossible normal selection of the cities basing on regions.

Let's say we have country Russia, geonameID = 2017370
Getting regions http://ws.geonames.org/children?geonameId=2017370
Then pick for example region "Stavropol'skiy Kray", geonameId = 487839

Getting children for it: http://ws.geonames.org/children?geonameId=487839
and we see only one entry "Kurskiy Rayon" with geonameId=538550.
It's a sub-region and there should be more than that. Anyway, if we try to get children of it we get empty results: http://ws.geonames.org/children?geonameId=538550.

Whereas there are cities in Stavropol'sky Kray, for example geonameId=548114 but it's impossible to find them through hierarchy.

Same thing with many other Russian regions, I guess it's true for other countries either

it is missing data, not a bug. Not all cities have a valid admincode1 in the database.

Marc

Thanks for reply, marc. Is there any chance to select cities knowing only first child (administrative division) of the country?