GeoNames Forum

Hi

I would like to use your webservice...

http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=Munich&maxRows=10&style=LONG&lang=de

However I think that one thing is missing before it can satisfy my needs.

I would like to be able to search for the local name of places. For example if a German searches for Munich they will enter München. To account for this you would simply have to add alternatenames to the query. If this is too slow you could search on alternatenames if nothing is matched in the name field.

Would it be possible to make this change?

cheers,
Stephen

Hi Stephen

No need to change anything for this. It has been included from the first day on.
All you have to do is to UTF URL encode the search parameter :

http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=M%C3%BCnchen&maxRows=10&style=LONG&lang=de

Checkout the faq to see how to do this in your programming language :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/8.page

And there is even more. You can also use country names in any language :
"Munich, Germany"
http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=Munich,germany&maxRows=10&style=LONG&lang=de
and
"München, Deutschland"
http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=M%C3%BCnchen,deutschland&maxRows=10&style=LONG&lang=de

See also the GeoNames Blog :
http://geonames.wordpress.com/2006/04/27/searching-with-country-names-in-different-languages/

Cheers

Marc

Hi

Lately the webservice has be down or unacceptably slow. Are you having problems at the moment with your database or webserver?

Could you please make the webservice code and database schema available so that others can also host such a service?

Cheers,
Stephen