GeoNames Forum

Hi, Marc!
Where can i get the whole list of your web services??
For example, I've found no mentioning about /children or /hierarchy services in the main documentation page (www.geonames.org/export).
Now i want to get the list of cities by geonameId and the list of streets.
If your services provide such an information, please, let me know.

Best regards,
Lysov Ivan

Hi Ivan

Barry Hunter has a list of GeoNames web services :
http://www.nearby.org.uk/geonames-webservices.php?sort=Input

The children and hierarchy services are new and not yet on the documentation. The term 'beta' has lost its meaning with the craze for perpetual beta. But this is what it would have been called some years ago. Now it is just missing in the documentation page

Would you mind to elaborate on the service you are missing? I am not sure whether I understand it fully.

Marc

Hi Mark!

Thank you, I've already been on this page.

I'm trying to find a service that recieves countyName (countryCode or geonameId of the country whatever) and returns the list of cities.

The second should return streets by the city (or disctrict of the city).

If you services don't provide this information, may be you have it all in downloadable dump or may be you'll suggest me some usefel links?

Thank you!

Hi Ivan

You can use the search service to return all cities for a country :
http://www.geonames.org/export/geonames-search.html
Just search for the fClass 'P', use the parameter country and use the country code or name as the search parameter q.

The service to return districts (pplx) for a city does not yet exists but we are working on it. The service for streets is not planned.

Marc

Thank you, it really works!

Best regards,
Lysov Ivan

Hello Marc, I have another one question
It seems to me very strange that you have a web-service that returns list of streets by LatLong (findNearbyStreets) and have no findStreets?geonameId=xxxx
To my mind it would be very useful not only for me in developing Geoservices and Apps.

Is it possible to download a dump with streets from your web-server?

Best regards,
Lysov Ivan

The findNearbyAddress service is only available for the US. The data is from the US Census. You can get it here :
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/

Thank you for this link.

http://ws.geonames.org/search?fclass=R&fcode=ST&q=Somecity is exactly what i need, unfortunately, it doesn't return any value

Best regards,
Lysov Ivan

Hi Ivan

It works for the few streets included in the main GeoNames database :
http://ws.geonames.org/search?fclass=R&fcode=ST&q=barcelona

I am reluctant to include streets in the main GeoNames database since it will blow up the database and I fear we would loose focus. There is so much other work to do (administrative divisions!) that I consider more important.

Any thoughts?

Best regards

Marc

Marc

I am reluctant to include streets in the main GeoNames database since it will blow up the database and I fear we would loose focus.

Indeed we have to think about granularity and scalability. Don't forget GeoNames scope is worldwide. It currently stores 6,500,000 + objetcs.
Compare that with some roughfigures. Earth surface is about 510,000,000 km². Let alone oceans which represent 70% of this surface, continents represent roughly 150,000,000 km². That means with a mean distance between named features of 1 km, this is the number of features you would get. This is 25 times the current number. In populated areas, the density of names, if you want to drill down to the street-block-building level, can easily raise up to hundreds of features per km². So going down to this level means you eventually play in the billion(s) names. That's *A LOT*.
So yes, let's focus for now on quality rather than quantity. GeoNames should provide a general framework down to the kilometric scale as it is now : cities, populated places, and certainly important landmarks in big cities. Having at this level Tour Eiffel and Sydney's Opera makes sense.
But the new police office at Le Bois-d'Oingt, http://www.geonames.org/6545092/ ... well I'm not sure.

Of course what is a landmark or not is a big question with no definitive answer, but reasonable guidelines can be found.

The Semantic Web framework in which Geonames has started to play is providing the tools for specific extensions, with a richer granularity (regional or thematical) of this general data base.