GeoNames Forum

Hi borkhuis

IE seems to have a problem with the combination of onClick and href.
<a href="javascript:;" onclick="search_loc();">Zoeken</a>

Your example is working for me if either I replace the empty statement with the search_loc function :

<a href="javascript:search_loc();" >Zoeken</a>

Or if I add a 'return false;' in the onClick call :
<a href="javascript:;" onclick="search_loc(); return false;">Zoeken</a>

Hope this helps

Marc

I have doubled the input field to 120 characters and updated the "The Most Noble and Most Loyal City of Santiago of the Knights of Goathemala".

Thanks for letting us know about the problem.

Marc

First of all we will need an official iso country code. I wonder how long it takes for iso to agree on a code :

http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/10faq/frequently-asked-questions.html#QS01

For the update of the country code for the toponyms in Montenegro we will need a border shape file to do it automatically.

Marc

Thank you Crewbaby, your list of iso languages is now included in the alternativenames zip file.

For the other readers :
nah is a language called "Nahuatl". It is included in the newest file Crewbaby sent me.

I have found this paragraph in the "als" wikipedia :

We know. When the Alemannic wikipedia was set up, Alemannic had no
code and since it was the Alsatian edition back then, als was
chosen. Recently we got a code (gsw), but it is only for Swiss
German and we decided to wait until there is a code for all variants
until we move the domain.

Marc

Geonames has been updated today with the newest nga dump 20060601.

This load was predominantly about Indonesia with nearly 10'000 new records. The modifications are lead by Russia with 1800 records followed by Indonesia with 825:

Code:

 Modifications :
 1799 Russia
 825 Indonesia
 795 Pakistan
 489 North Korea
 413 Mali
 166 Myanmar
 158 Afghanistan
 116 Somalia
 58 Iran
 30 Serbia And Montenegro
 16 China
 9 Peru
 4 India
 3 Taiwan
 2 Kazakhstan
 1 Belgium
 ------------
 4884 total modifications
 
 
 
 Inserts :
 9961 Indonesia
 2897 Russia
 515 Mali
 313 Peru
 113 Myanmar
 105 Pakistan
 19 China
 18 North Korea
 16 Somalia
 7 India
 6 Kazakhstan
 4 Afghanistan
 ------------
 13974 total inserts
 
 
 18858 total inserts and updates

The numbers for the previous load 2006-04-10 are here :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/52.page

Hi Andrew

I am glad it worked. Thanks for sharing the solution with us, other MS SQL users will have it easier now and find the solution here.

Marc

Hi Andrew

Did you try specifying the row terminator explicitly? On windows 'newline' often means '\n\r' wheras the dump files are using '\n'.

Marc

Most of them are local dialects, see here :

http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/

And I have just seen that "als" is wrong. The alternate names in this language are from wikipedia (example http://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel ). Up to now I was under the impression wikipedia was using iso language codes, but at least in this case it is wrong. "als" in iso is "Albanian, Tosk" but wikipedia is using "als" for 'Allemanisch' (a German dialect).

Let me know if you find other errors of this type.

Marc

Hi Crewbaby

It really is a pitty the iso folks did not manage to use UK for the United Kingdom and had to pick GB. I hope Northern Ireland will get it's own iso code and then GB will make sense again.

I forgot to update this forum thread. We recently discussed this topic on the geonames mailing list and decided to use GB after all.

Please feel free to join the thread :

http://groups.google.com/group/geonames/browse_frm/thread/4e348e74a0088646/#

Marc

Hi Crewbaby

You are right, it would be better to have consistency. I just didn't have the time till now to write a small constency enforcer routine.
Do you happen to have one written in java and would you like to share the code with us? The function should take an iso language code as a single argument and return the 2 letter code if one is available, otherwise it will return the input code.

Marc

Hi Dudu

I am not sure which maps you are referring to. We mainly use google maps and for these you have to ask google or their partners Teleatlas and Navteq.

For the maps we have drawn ourselves and the ones you can generate with the 'export' command, you are definitely free to use them.

Regards,

Marc

Hi Philipp

Just drop me a line at : info@geonames.org

Marc

Hi Rick

A first prototype for a hierarchy service is ready. Any comment is welcome.

Example :
http://ws.geonames.org/hierarchy?geonameId=1

It returns country, first subdivision and the geoname record itself. In this order.
Only about a third of all subdivisions are already mapped to their geoname id. If you can tell us which countries are important to you, I have a look at them and make sure these are mapped to their geonameId.

Marc

Hi Szymon

I guess with Wiki you are referring to Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia data is loaded periodically into geonames. If you geotag a Wikipedia article, it will become visible in geonames after the next data load.

This happens usually once a month.

The dump files currently (June 12 2006) loaded are :

plwiki-20060514-pages-articles.xml
dewiki-20060515-pages-articles.xml
enwiki-20060518-pages-articles.xml
eswiki-20060521-pages-articles.xml

Marc

I think we should be able to roll out a prototype with country and first order subdivision pretty soon. For more levels of the hierarchy we currently don't have enough information ready. For many countries it should be possible to derive it from other datasets. (US and Europe) For many other countries it will be difficult to get the necessary information.

Would you be interested in a prototype returning the country and the first subdivision (state/province)?

Marc

There is unfortunately no official geonames logo available yet. We don't have a designer among us and don't feel competent enough to create one.

Many users use a text like 'Powered by Geonames'.
Noiv from ExploreOurPla.net is using the following logo :

Marc

Hi

There are no restrictions, however, the services are licensed with an 'attribution license'. It means it would be nice of you to give credit to geonames, if you are using the data or the web services. It does not matter whether you use the data or web service commercially or not.

If you want to help us defray the cost for our servers you can make a donation via Paypal or you can contact us to be invoiced.

If you plan to make an awful lot of requests per day, we can also set up a dedicated server for you only.

Marc

Die Namen sind jetzt nach 'Wichtigkeit' geordnet. Das heisst, bei der Suche nach 'Ber' steht jetzt Berlin zuoberst gefolgt von Bern. Ich denke, das macht mehr Sinn als eine rein alphabetische Ordnung. Dann hätte man irgendwelche völlig unwichtigen Weiler, Teiche oder Hügel zuoberst.

Was ich mir noch vorstellen könnte, wäre unter den x wichtigsten eine alphabetische Sortierung durchzuführen und dann die "maxRows" obersten davon auszuliefern.

Marc

Lappeenranta heisst auch "Villmanstrand" :

http://www.geonames.org/search.html?q=Villmanstrand

Ich habe den Service jetzt so erweitert, dass er auch eine Namensvariante zurückliefert, die mit den gegebenen Anfangsbuchstaben beginnt.
Das heisst Lappeenranta wird bei dieser Suche nun als Villmanstrand angegeben.

Die Namensvarianten sind auch sprachabhängig. Wenn du bei einer Suche nach 'Bern' möchtest, dass die Hauptstadt der Schweiz in der deutschen schreibweise angeführt wird, musst du den parameter lang=de übergeben.

Bsp :
http://ws.geonames.org/search?name_startsWith=bern
http://ws.geonames.org/search?name_startsWith=bern&lang=de

Marc

CREATE TABLE `geonames` (
`geonameid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`name` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
`ansiname` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
`alternatenames` varchar(2000) NOT NULL default '',
`latitude` double NOT NULL default '0',
`longitude` double NOT NULL default '0',
`feature_class` char(1) ,
`feature_code` varchar(10) ,
`country_code` char(2),
`cc2` varchar(60),
`admin1_code` varchar(20) default '',
`admin2_code` varchar(80) default '',
`admin3_code` varchar(20) default '',
`admin4_code` varchar(20) default '',
`population` bigint(11) default '0',
`elevation` int(11) default '0',
`gtopo30` int(11) default '0',
`timezone` varchar(40),
`modification_date` date default '0000-00-00',
PRIMARY KEY (`geonameid`)
) CHARACTER SET utf8 ;

You will need to index the columns needed by your application in queries.

Edit 2006.07.19 : added cc2
Edit 2006.08.08 : added timezone
Edit 2007.03.24 : added admin2
Edit 2007.07.25 : added admin3 and admin4
Edit 2009.04.13 : alter column population from int to bigint

How to load all tables is described here :
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/732.page