Use GeoJSON API

Calling a JSON API

In this assignment you will write a Python program somewhat similar to http://www.py4e.com/code3/geojson.pyhttps://www.py4e.com/code3/geojson.py?PHPSESSID=7e0eb4085b0f89cfe58f6a28da74bff2The program will prompt for a location, contact a web service and retrieve JSON for the web service and parse that data, and retrieve the first place_id from the JSON. A place ID is a textual identifier that uniquely identifies a place as within Google Maps.

API End Points

To complete this assignment, you should use this API endpoint that has a static subset of the Google Data:

http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/json?http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/json?

This API uses the same parameter (address) as the Google API. This API also has no rate limit so you can test as often as you like. If you visit the URL with no parameters, you get "No address..." response.

To call the API, you need to include a key= parameter and provide the address that you are requesting as the address= parameter that is properly URL encoded using the urllib.parse.urlencode() function as shown in http://www.py4e.com/code3/geojson.pyhttps://www.py4e.com/code3/geojson.py?PHPSESSID=7e0eb4085b0f89cfe58f6a28da74bff2

Make sure to check that your code is using the API endpoint as shown above. You will get different results from the geojson and json endpoints so make sure you are using the same end point as this autograder is using.

Test Data / Sample Execution

You can test to see if your program is working with a location of "South Federal University" which will have a place_id like:

ChIJNeHD4p-540AR2Q0_ZjwmKJ8

$ python3 solution.py
Enter location: South Federal University
Retrieving http://...
Retrieved 2445 characters
Place id ChIJNeHD4p-540AR2Q0_ZjwmKJ8

One sample program

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import json

api_key = False

if api_key is False:
    api_key = 42
    serviceurl = 'http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/json?'
else:
    serviceurl = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?'

address = input('Enter location: ')
if len(address) < 1:
    address = 'South Federal University'

parms = dict()
parms['address'] = address
if api_key is not False:
    parms['key'] = api_key
url = serviceurl + urllib.parse.urlencode(parms)

print('Retrieving', url)
uh = urllib.request.urlopen(url)
data = uh.read().decode()
print('Retrieved', len(data), 'characters')

js = json.loads(data)

place_id = js['results'][0]['place_id']
print(place_id)