GeoNames Home | Postal Codes | Download / Webservice | About 

GeoNames Forum
  [Search] Search   [Recent Topics] Recent Topics   [Groups] Back to home page 
[Register] Register / 
[Login] Login 
Documentation incomplete for field "isolanguage" in "alternate names" table  XML
Forum Index -> FAQ - frequently asked questions
Author Message
is_null



Joined: 10/06/2012 19:39:31
Messages: 1
Offline

The documentation for "isolanguage" field on http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/ is:

iso 639 language code 2- or 3-characters; 4-characters 'post' for postal codes and 'iata','icao' and faac for airport codes, fr_1793 for French Revolution names, abbr for abbreviation, link for a website, varchar(7) 


But you see that "isolanguage" column can be empty too:

Code:
 3059101 2643743 en      London City
 3059102 2643743 en      City of London  
 3059103 2643743 en      The City                        1
 3173887 2643743         London  
 7581111 2643743 ext     Londri  
 7581112 2643743 new     लण्डन
 7581113 2643743 mzn     لندن
 7581114 2643743 ilo     Londres 
 7581115 2643743 tpi     Landen  
 7581116 2643743 mwl     Londres
 


In this case, it [i]looks[i] like when "isolanguage" is empty, then this alternate name is the official name. I would like to know more about this case: will *all* rows have a corresponding row that has isolanguage='' ?

My use case is that rather than filling a database table, I have a key/value store for each "isolanguage" (that matters). Currently my script has to query the database to get the name of the corresponding geoname_id, and use it as key, for the alternate name that is used as value.

If my script could expect every geoname in alternateNames to have a corresponding entry with isolanguage="", which contains what it would retrieve from the database: then i would not need to hit the database anymore (or rather, load it in memory ... yay !).

Thanks in advance for your support. (I hope this message makes sense !)
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
Offline

an explicit language code has precedence. If no specific language code is available then the name with no language code as a general name is used. The main toponym name is used if no alternatenames are defined.

Marc

[WWW]
 
Forum Index -> FAQ - frequently asked questions
Go to:   
Powered by JForum 2.1.5 © JForum Team