GeoNames Forum

Hallo,

Firstly, I'm new here and wanted to register how delighted I am with the excellent service - by far the best available that I've found having scoured for ages, so well done.

Here is the problem:

I can get a placeName for anywhere on land given a lat/long.

I can also get a list of water bodies using search and featureCode

I would like to be able to say which water body I am in, given a latitude and a longitude.

My current algorithm is messy:

1. use findNearbyPlaceNames with lat/long of current position
2. If found, great, present place
3. If not, then get a full list of oceans using search?featurecode=OCN
4. Compute nearest lat/long in this returned to list to current position
5. Return result

I think maybe there is a better way so please can someone advise?

Thanks in advance

Just thought I'd post to say I had done this and this works great - thanks again for the hard work in producing this quality service.

Just to confirm, I can find a placename regardless of whether on land or water - I return the sea or ocean nearest to point if no city found.