Abstract
This guide provides reference information and URI examples
for the Yahoo! PlaceFinder Web Service.
This guide is intended for software developers who have prior
experience with REST Web services.
Yahoo! PlaceFinder is a REST Web service that
supports world-wide geocoding of street addresses, points of interest, airports, and place names.
Points of interest are locations such as schools, shopping malls, museums, and transit stations. Place names supported include
counties, states, countries, and continents.
To access the PlaceFinder Web service, call HTTP GET on the
base URI,
specifying the input location with one or more URI parameters.
The response from PlaceFinder
contains
geographic data, including latitude and longitude, as well
as address information such as street, state, and country.
(See
Examples.)
PlaceFinder supports the following type of queries:
-
Single-line address: An address contained in a single field. The Web service parses the address data and return the best
match.
-
Multi-line address: An address contained in up to three boxes. The Web service combines the address data and then processes
it like a single-line address query.
-
Fully parsed address: An address with each component (street, city, etc.) is in a separate field. The Web service does
not parse the address, so it is less likely to
interpret the address incorrectly, such as
mistaking a street name for a city name.
-
Point of Interest (POI), Area of Interest (AOI): Places not identified by mailing addresses, such as parks and monuments.
-
Airport codes: The three-letter airport codes you may have seen printed on your luggage tags.
-
Where On Earth ID (WOEID): A unique permanent identifier of a location.
-
Coordinates: The latitude and longitude of a location. Sometimes called reverse geocoding, this feature enables applications
to get the address nearest to the specified coordinates.