Hello, I just recently started using this amazing service, but encountered some obstacles in programming.
For example the search for the town "Essen" throws a different result with different WOEID than its correspondent postal code search "45127". The name search does not even return a result including that postal code.
Also I don't get any results searching for "Alpen", but using its postal code "46519" gives me its result.
Are those result inconsistencies common? Is there a chance that the linkage between specific data will be improved or is it dependent on single specific hints from users.
Thank you.
The postal code "45127" (WOEID 12834182) and the town "Essen" (WOEID 648820) are represented as different places in GeoPlanet. There are 33 postal codes (including 45127) assigned to Essen. A search for "Essen" will return the town place, but no associated postal code. A search for "45127" will return the postal code place and the associated town. You can get a list of the postal codes in Essen using the children collection:
CODE
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/place/648820/children.type(postal+code);count=0?appid=[yourappid]
Your search for "Alpen" fails because the probability that this query refers to a place is too low; it may refer to a company or product (try a web search for this name). If you include additional place information in the query, such as country name or code, a result will be returned:
CODE
http://where.yahooapis.com/v1/places.q(alpen+de)?appid=[yourappid]
Be sure to enclose the query in quotes if it contains a comma. Also note that there are several countries that use five digit postal codes (including US, Mexico, Germany, France, and Spain), so it is a good idea to include the country code in the query, or provide it as a focus.
Eddie Babcock
Yahoo! Geo Technologies
