I am trying to prototype a system that will display a list of choices to a user, and allow them to place an order for the one they select (an over simplification of the prototype, but sufficient to get to the point). I have the users credit card number, billing and shipping addresses, and other contact information, but I can't find any web services that will let me actually purchase something with this information to complete the prototype. I have checked directories such as Programmable Web and Xmethods, but they just seem to point to APIs that let you check for prices and availability, but not actually place an order. Does such a thing exist, or is there some reason (such as security) that I am missing, that prevents such a service from being offered?
The most important thing about online shopping is the security of transmitted information (e.g. credit card data). So the ideal case is to transmit these information directly to the related bank's (issuer of the credit card) payment services, rather than passing it via other service providers. This is what 3-D Secure does.
So when you use a common API this means putting an extra broker between, and passing the secure information to this party which increases vulnerability. Since such a broker cannot use 3-D secure (since it is not the merchant so not possible to make an agreement with the banks) and it should pass the information to online shopping site.
Moreover, an online shoping site can block traffic coming from such an intermediary webservice at any time if you do not make an obligatory agreement and making agreements for each online merchant is practically not very possible.
There is no such free API available the simple reason behind that information like credit card is very secure and confidential and there will security threat on free API's.
here is list of best 10 online payment system
http://sixrevisions.com/tools/online-payment-systems/
and this one who providing live demo
http://www.fastcharge.com/
I think it is possible though I don't know in depth information. I think this is what you see. In next steps you will be redirected to payment gateway of the bank and then you can complete the transactions just by answering some security questions. I think this is a service you should obtain from the bank. And I haven't seen any universal API that can perform the task you have mentioned.
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I am working on a civics related project and I need to be able to display all the properties in the City of Philadelphia on a map, so I'll need to get the latitude & longitude for all 580,000 properties. (Only once)
Most APIs like Google/Yahoo have limits of 5,000 per day, and even BatchGeo has a similar limit.
Is there a way I can do a one-time geocoding of all these addresses?
You can find a list of free and paid geocoding services at USC site.
Also check Microsoft's Geocode Dataflow API, it allows up to 200,000 entries / 300 Mb and takes up to 14 days.
Another possibility to combine several services at once: use 4 services that allow 5,000 entries a day and you'll finish your task in a month.
You can use Map Quest of Cloud Made.
I have created a small utility to help compare these API's.
The utility is hosted at below url:
http://ankit-zalani.appspot.com/GeoCode/index.jsp
Tobias, I work for an address verification (and recently, geocoding) company called SmartyStreets.
Many services have usage restrictions based on volume and license agreements which prevent users from storing the results of geocoding queries. There are some vendors, however, which don't have limits or restrictions like that.
I would recommend something like LiveAddress which will not only geocode the addresses but also perform CASS-Certified verification to make sure your addresses are correct before giving you potentially faulty coordinates. You can run 580,000 or even millions at a time in a few minutes, and we allow you to store your results.
Hope this helps. If you have any more questions about addresses, I'll personally assist.
This thread is pretty old by now, but there have been some developments in recent years making bulk geocoding very cheap. My favorite option is to just obtain a geocoding server on AWS ( google: geocoding on aws), many options there, some free some with low hourly rates (total cost depends on the server you choose, of course.)
I'm working on a API that will accept addresses in searches. We would like to use Google's geocoding service to normalize the addresses before submitting the search criteria to our search engine.
This caught my attention:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/index.html#Limits
"Note: the Geocoding API may only be used in conjunction with a Google map; geocoding results without displaying them on a map is prohibited. For complete details on allowed usage, consult the Maps API Terms of Service License Restrictions."
Does this mean we can't use the Geocoding service for this purpose? Having used libraries that access Google's geocoding service before, I know it's technically possible to do this but it sounds like a violation of the terms of service.
Are there other options for what we're trying to do?
Edit:
It turns out our company does have a license with Google to use the addresses that come back, and they will eventually be displayed on a Google Map to the end user, satisfying the terms of our agreement.
Short answer: You can't. The terms of service seem pretty clear-cut that geocoding using their API is not in line with their terms, unless you display them on a Google Map.
If you need this for other purposes, you should consider licensing a Geocoding library and dataset(s) for your regions of interest. There are quite a few companies which sell these for commercial purposes.
Update on this really old post:
#Cerin pointed out something important on this answer.
USPS Web Tools API are only free if you're using them to ship
via USPS
So be legal.
You are correct: you can't use the Google Geocoder for address cleaning.
You can use this wrapper to access USPS's Web Tools.
Another inexpensive solution is Semaphore, but you'll have to write your own wrapper class to call the DLLs.
The USPS has a free service to validate addresses. It's in a fairly easy-to-use API that you can curl information to and receive a valid response back. The only rub is that they're a little slow when it comes to registering, and they require you to run several tests before they'll open it up. Regardless, once you've jumped through the hoops, it does a great job. It's been keeping addresses in my app clean for quite a while now without any hiccups.
I am looking for a Data Look up Service, that I could send a real estate property address (street, city, state, zip) and get back information about this property (owners, mortgage, sq footage, rooms, etc)
Would any one know of an existing service like that, that could be used and an ASP.Net application?
Thanks!
Well the type of service you are looking for is generally limited to Multiple Listing Service. To be a member of an MLS you have to me a member of the NAR (National Association of Realtors). Even then the type of service you are looking for (on demand lookup) is then available generally only to Designated Brokers (there is only one Designated Broker per Real Estate brokerage). However you can sometimes find services that can provide MLS like lookups for you (check google etc) but you will likely have to pay. It would probably interest you to check out this related question.
How would I go about converting an address or city to a latitude/longitude? Are there commercial outfits I can "rent" this service from? This would be used in a commercial desktop application on a Windows PC with fulltime internet access.
Google has a geocoding API which seems to work pretty well for most of the locations that they have Google Maps data for.
http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2006/06/geocoding-at-last.html
They provide online geocoding (via JavaScript):
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Geocoding
Or backend geocoding (via an HTTP request):
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Geocoding_Direct
The data is usually the same used by Google Maps itself. (note that there are some exceptions to this, such as the UK or Israel, where the data is from a different source and of slightly reduced quality)
Nothing much new to add, but I have had a lot of real-world experience in GIS and geocoding from a previous job. Here is what I remember:
If it is a "every once in a while" need in your application, I would definitely recommend the Google or Yahoo Geocoding APIs, but be careful to read their licensing terms.
I know that the Google Maps API in general is easy to license for even commercial web pages, but can't be used in a pay-to-access situation. In other words you can use it to advertise or provide a service that drives ad revenue, but you can't charge people to acess your site or even put it behind a password system.
Despite these restrictions, they are both excellent choices because they frequently update their street databases. Most of the free backend tools and libraries use Census and TIGER road data that is updated infrequently, so you are less likely to successfully geocode addresses in rapidly growing areas or new subdivisions.
Most of the services also restrict the number of geocoding queries you can make per day, so it's OK to look up addresses of, say, new customers who get added to your database, but if you run a batch job that feeds thousands of addresses from your database into the geocoder, you're going to get shutoff.
I don't think this one has been mentioned yet, but ESRI has ArcWeb web services that include geocoding, although they aren't very cheap. Last time I used them it cost around 1.5cents per lookup, but you had to prepay a certain amount to get started. Again the major advantage is that the road data they use is kept up to date in a timely manner and you can use the data in commercial situations that Google doesn't allow. The ArcWeb service will also serve up high-resolution satellite and aerial photos a la Google Maps, again priced per request.
If you want to roll your own or have access to much more accurate data, you can purchase subscriptions to GIS data from companies like TeleAtlas, but that ain't cheap. You can buy only a state or county worth of data if your needs are extremely local. There are several tiers of data - GIS features only, GIS plus detailed streets, all that plus geocode data, all of that plus traffic flow/direction/speed limits for routing. Of course, the price goes up as you go up the tiers.
Finally, the Wikipedia article on Geocoding has some good information on the algorithms and techniques. Even if you aren't doing it in your own code, it's useful to know what kind of errors and accuracy you can expect from various kinds of data sources.
Yahoo! Maps Web Services - Geocoding API accurately geocodes UK postcodes, unlike Google's API.
Unfortunately yahoo has deprecated this service, you could visit http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/placefinder/ for yahoo's service
Try this: http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=1600+Amphitheatre+Parkway,+Mountain+View,+CA&sensor=false
more info here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/
When you convert an address or object to a lat/long it is called Geocoding.
There are a lot geocoding solutions around. The solution right for your project will depend on the acceptability of the licensing terms of each geocoding solution. Both Microsoft Virtual Earth and Google Maps offer solutions which are free to use under a very restrictive licenses...
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/tutorial
Having rolled my own solution for this before, I can whole heartedly recommend the Geo::Coder::US Perl module for this. Just download all the census data and use the included importer to create the Berkeley DB for your country and point the Perl script at it. Use the module's built in address parsing, and there you have it: An offline geocoding system!
Try with this code, i work like this with addresses:
It is link in which with GET method you will send request and get lat and lng. http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=YOUR ADDRES&sensor=false
For exemple: http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=W Main St, Bergenfield, NJ 07621&sensor=false
1. Create your GET method.
public static String GET(String url) throws Exception {//GET Method
String result = null;
InputStream inputStream = null;
try {
HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpGet httpGet = new HttpGet(url);
Log.v("ExecuteGET: ", httpGet.getRequestLine().toString());
HttpResponse httpResponse = httpclient.execute(httpGet);
inputStream = httpResponse.getEntity().getContent();
if (inputStream != null) {
result = convertInputStreamToString(inputStream);
Log.v("Result: ", "result\n" + result);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return result;
}
2. Create method for send request
#SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public static String getLatLng(String accessToken) throws Exception{
String query=StaticString.gLobalGoogleUrl+"json?address="+URLEncoder.encode(accessToken)+"&sensor=false";
Log.v("GETGoogleGeocoder", query+"");
return GET(query);
}
gLobalGoogleUrl="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/"
3. Call method getLatLng
String result=getLatLng("W Main St, Bergenfield, NJ 07621");
4. Parse JSONObject
Now result is JSONObject with information about address and lan,lng.
Parse JSONObject (result) with gson().
After that use lat,lng.
If you have question about code , ask.
You want a geocoding application. These are available either online or as an application backend.
Online applications:
Google has a geocoding API
Backend applications:
GeoStan
Maptsraction (http://www.mapstraction.com) lets you choose between any number of geocoding services. This could be helpful if you need to do large quantities, as I know Google has a limit to how many you can do a day.
Virtual Earth does it. There is also a web service at geocoder.us
You could also try the OpenStreetMap NameFinder (or the current Nominatim), which contains open source, wiki-like street data for (potentially) the entire world.
you can use bing maps soap services, where you can reference reverse geocode service to find lat/long from address
here is the link
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc980922.aspx
Yahoo! Maps Web Services - Geocoding API
You can use Microsoft's MapPoint Web Services.
I created a blog entry on how to convert an address to a GeoCode (lat/long).
Thought I would add one more to the list. Texas A&M has a pretty decently priced service here: http://geoservices.tamu.edu/Services/Geocode/
A good option if you have a pretty large set of addresses to geocode and don't want to pat 10k to Google or Microsoft. We still ended up using the returned data in a Google Map.
you are asking about Geocoder.
Google provide an API for this.
so does another provider for this.
you can see the demo of implementation in My Current Location .net
The USC WebGIS Geocoder is free and offers several API's, or you can upload a database for online batch processing.
If you need a one off solution, you can try: https://addresstolatlong.com/
I've used it for a long time and it has worked pretty well for me.