GeoNames Forum

Hi,
sometimes when I query the geonames search webservice I have a city-name with special characters, like ß (eszet), æ, ð (eth), ø, etc.

Can anyone tell me how these characters are converted so that I can succesfully query: http://ws.geonames.org/search?q=<namehere>

I managed to stip diacritics, but these special characters remain (are not transformed to their best ascii translation). If these names went through a lucene analyzer-chain (for example) I would really like to know which one.

Thanks in advance.
Britske

Britske

String parameters for the web services have to be utf8 url encoded. There is a faq entry on this topic:
http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/8.page

The search on the server side is indeed using a customized lucene analyzer, but this should not affect you as a user of the service.

Marc

thanks,

the trouble seemed to be in another spot (apache httpclient) which resulted in me painstakingly trying to reformat corrupted data to adhere to the correct input for the gwebservice. Hmm, there's a lesson to be learned in here somewhere.
britske