Batch Geocoding with the Google Maps API

I’ve been working more and more with the Google Maps API recently. And one thing strikes me as odd; it’s difficult to find examples of how to retrieve geocodes for addresses. If you’re going to implement the API in a website, you usually have to take multiple addresses and convert them to geocodes. But how do you do this?

Enter Geocoder. You may be asking yourself, “Who’s Geocoder?” No, no my friend; Geocoder is not a who, it’s a what. It is a little web app that will retrieve the coordinates of any address (known to Google Maps), using the Google Maps API. The beautiful thing about Geocoder is that it allows you to perform batch retrievals using any character(s) to separate the records. Geocoder also gives you the ability to drop a draggable marker onto the map and it will tell you the coordinates of the location you move it to. This is extremely helpful for locations without addresses. And best of all, Geocoder is completely free and onemarco.com-independent. “How,” you ask? Simple, you can download Geocoder and insert your Google Maps API key in the index file. It will run on any web server as long as you have an API key. I’ve even zipped it up into a convenient archive so that you can download all the files with one click.

Geocoder is free to use for any reason without any restrictions. Just credit me if you redistribute it.

P.S. I would like to thank Simon Reynolds for designing my masthead. You can check out his blog at SR28.com and his artwork at 4StoryStudio.com. His blog is designed beautifully.