Ask HN: What are some good tools for converting GPS data into a location name?

[Devlin_Donnelly]

I am working on a web-based application and I want to read in GPS coordinates provided by the user's browser and output a specific location such as the name of a city or other locality.

Thanks for any tips.

[gspyrou]

Try using Google maps reverse geocoding https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#...

[Devlin_Donnelly]

Thanks for the idea, but apparently google only allows the use this service in conjunction with Google maps, so it won't work for my project.

Maybe there are some open source map databases of GPS coordinates mapped to political/municipal localities?

[bartonfink]

MapQuest offers a geocoding service which doesn't tie you to MapQuest's maps the way Google does. It's free up to some usage amount (I think it's 5k requests a day). You can see more here:

http://www.mapquestapi.com/geocoding/

[Devlin_Donnelly]

Thanks it looks like this one might work for my needs.

[got2surf]

If by chance you're using Ruby on Rails, then http://www.rubygeocoder.com/ is great.

[belbn]

http://www.google.com/search?q=GPSDATA