GeoNames Forum

For France we are using the following administrative divisions :

ADM1 = régions (22)
ADM2 = départements (96)
ADM3 = Arrondissements (329)
ADM4 = Communes (not yet complete: ca 31'000 out of 36'000)

The official authority for French administrative divisions is the INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques).
http://www.insee.fr/fr/nom_def_met/nomenclatures/cog/index.asp
http://rdf.insee.fr/geo/

Some recent changes to France ADM4 names :
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichSarde.do?reprise=true&page=1&idSarde=SARDOBJT000007104406&ordre=null&nature=null&g=ls

I've noticed a different behavior for the départements of Dordogne (24) and Vaucluse (84) than for the other départements.
When I ask for a location, for instance in Isère, with http://api.geonames.org/countrySubdivisionJSON?formatted=true&lat=45.4&lng=6.8&username=xxx&level=2 I get an answer containing an array with both level 1 and level 2 administrative codes :

{
"adminCode2": "38",
"codes": [
{
"code": "ARA",
"level": "1",
"type": "ISO3166-2"
},
{
"code": "38",
"level": "2",
"type": "ISO3166-2"
}
],
"adminCode1": "84",
"adminName2": "Isère",
"distance": 0,
"countryCode": "FR",
"countryName": "France",
"adminName1": "Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes"
}

In Dordogne, and it's the same in Vaucluse, I get only level 1 in the codes array :

http://api.geonames.org/countrySubdivisionJSON?formatted=true&lat=45.4&lng=0.8&username=xxx&level=2

{
"adminCode2": "24",
"codes": [{
"code": "NAQ",
"level": "1",
"type": "ISO3166-2"
}],
"adminCode1": "75",
"adminName2": "Dordogne",
"distance": 0,
"countryCode": "FR",
"countryName": "France",
"adminName1": "Nouvelle-Aquitaine"
}

Of course I've changed my code to read the adminCode2 field, but I'm curious to know the reason behind this, if there's not a potential problem behind this different behaviours.

Thank you very much for any answer.

thanks for pointing this out.
It is a bug, both iso codes should be returned.
Fix will be deployed in the next days.

Marc