4 ms·

Mapzen Search: An open source geocoding api built on open data

150 points by riordan 11y ago

SlashmanX 11y ago
Worth mentioning that this is built on Pelias[0] which is an exceptional piece of software. [0] - https://github.com/pelias/pelias https://github.com/pelias/pelias
jkkramer 11y ago
I'm confused. The "demo" is just a screenshot? Seems promising but I would like to try it.
- filleokus 11y ago
  Yeah, I have the same confusion. I tried with just raw API calls, http://pelias.mapzen.com/search?input=Stockholm http://pelias.mapzen.com/search?input=Stockholm, but the "demo" seems like it would be more useful.
- superneon 11y ago
  There is a Pelias leaflet plugin which serves as a good demo: http://pelias.github.io/leaflet-geocoder/#12/40.7258/-73.9806 http://pelias.github.io/leaflet-geocoder/#12/40.7258/-73.980... Working on a better one that highlights all the levers in the API :)
aembleton 11y ago
I've signed up for a api key, but I can't work out how to use it. I can't find any documentation. I've tried using the curl example provided in https://github.com/pelias/pelias https://github.com/pelias/pelias and appending api_key=$apikey to it but I just get an error back saying that this is not a valid key. Has anyone found any documentation for how to use this API?
- aembleton 11y ago
  Just found the documentation here: https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc
  - riordan 11y ago
    My bad, we moved the main domain over to search.mapzen.com from pelias.mapzen.com and hadn't updated the documentation for the project background repository! We're super flattered over all the attention and we're listening for any feedback.
andrewljohnson 11y ago
MapZen Search (aka Pelias) is amazing. We're using it to auto-name routes on gaiagps.com, and we're rolling out new search features and auto-naming to the app too. MapZen makes a lot of great stuff actually. We also use the Mapzen Valhalla routing engine (https://github.com/valhalla https://github.com/valhalla) to do trail routing: http://blog.gaiagps.com/plot-a-precise-trail-with-the-gaia-gps-trail-finder/ http://blog.gaiagps.com/plot-a-precise-trail-with-the-gaia-g.... OpenStreetMap.org recently added Valhalla too - interesting to see competition between MapBox/OSRM and MapZen/Valhalla. The best mapping tech is being developed openly now, even competing open projects - that's a fount of innovation.
lobster_johnson 11y ago
This looks really good! We've been looking for something to run ourselves that can replace Google. However, I found a few flaws after a couple of minutes of testing. 1. Neither search nor autocomplete appears to support filtering by fields other than country? We have an app that needs to filter autocompletions by state. A focus point might be sufficient if the autocompleter aggressively sorts results based on distance, but I have yet to meet one that does this (or allows a tuning of the distance function). A rectangular bounding box filter doesn't cut it. I guess I'll have to check out the code and see if this can be added/improved. 2. The API only returns points, with no boundary information, for street addresses. We have an app that uses geocoding to match street addresses to points. But if your address is a bit imprecise and matches an entire stretch of highway (it happens a lot!), that's obviously not a valid match — something like "Highway 66" is just wrong. Google will wisely return a bounds object that you can compute the area for and determine if it's small enough that it's likely a precise enough location (we use 10m2 as the maximum). Unlike Google, Mapzen doesn't even tell you that your match is a "route" — everything is an individual street address. Not sure how trivial this would be to implement, as boundaries would need support from datasets; OSM has the required data, OpenAddresses might not. 3. Street address matching seems a bit patchy. I tried my Brooklyn street address, and it didn't find it. The building was constructed last year, though, so maybe it's old data. Can someone from Mapzen comment?
- spectre256 11y ago
  Hi! I work on the Mapzen Search team. Glad to hear you like most of what you've seen so far. Your feedback is super useful and I think at least some of it we'll be able to address relatively soon. 1.) We do have a focus point option for autocomplete, with either a soft (will sometimes show you results far away if we think they're really relevant) or a hard (only stuff nearby) radius that can be set. Look at the boundary.circle and focus.point parameters in our /v1/search endpoint docs (https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc/blob/master/search.md https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc/blob/master/search.md). As you probably realized tuning this for general use is actually quite difficult, but if you're running pelias yourself there's nothing stopping you from tuning to your particular use case. But if you're running your own instance you can also just add a filter by state, since we already have a state field in all our documents. 2.) That's right, even for our datasets that have polygon data (only OSM and Quattroshapes), we just take the center point. This is something we want to add in the future, but it may take a few months at least, since we don't currently have much infrastructure for handling polygon data. We also have another awesome team at Mapzen that is working on a gazetteer project called Who's On First(http://whosonfirst.mapzen.com http://whosonfirst.mapzen.com) that should really help by offering concordance between datasets. 3.) This one's interesting, we should be able to fix it right away because NYC data is generally quite good. Can you check if your building is in OpenStreetMap(http://openstreetmap.org http://openstreetmap.org) or OpenAddresses (http://openaddresses.io http://openaddresses.io has a download for the USA, then find the file for NYC)?

150 points by riordan 11y ago

Worth mentioning that this is built on Pelias[0] which is an exceptional piece of software. [0] - https://github.com/pelias/pelias https://github.com/pelias/pelias

jkkramer 11y ago

I'm confused. The "demo" is just a screenshot? Seems promising but I would like to try it.

filleokus 11y ago
Yeah, I have the same confusion. I tried with just raw API calls, http://pelias.mapzen.com/search?input=Stockholm http://pelias.mapzen.com/search?input=Stockholm, but the "demo" seems like it would be more useful.
superneon 11y ago
There is a Pelias leaflet plugin which serves as a good demo: http://pelias.github.io/leaflet-geocoder/#12/40.7258/-73.9806 http://pelias.github.io/leaflet-geocoder/#12/40.7258/-73.980... Working on a better one that highlights all the levers in the API :)

aembleton 11y ago

I've signed up for a api key, but I can't work out how to use it. I can't find any documentation. I've tried using the curl example provided in https://github.com/pelias/pelias https://github.com/pelias/pelias and appending api_key=$apikey to it but I just get an error back saying that this is not a valid key. Has anyone found any documentation for how to use this API?

aembleton 11y ago
Just found the documentation here: https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc
- riordan 11y ago
  My bad, we moved the main domain over to search.mapzen.com from pelias.mapzen.com and hadn't updated the documentation for the project background repository! We're super flattered over all the attention and we're listening for any feedback.

andrewljohnson 11y ago

MapZen Search (aka Pelias) is amazing. We're using it to auto-name routes on gaiagps.com, and we're rolling out new search features and auto-naming to the app too. MapZen makes a lot of great stuff actually. We also use the Mapzen Valhalla routing engine (https://github.com/valhalla https://github.com/valhalla) to do trail routing: http://blog.gaiagps.com/plot-a-precise-trail-with-the-gaia-gps-trail-finder/ http://blog.gaiagps.com/plot-a-precise-trail-with-the-gaia-g.... OpenStreetMap.org recently added Valhalla too - interesting to see competition between MapBox/OSRM and MapZen/Valhalla. The best mapping tech is being developed openly now, even competing open projects - that's a fount of innovation.

lobster_johnson 11y ago

This looks really good! We've been looking for something to run ourselves that can replace Google. However, I found a few flaws after a couple of minutes of testing. 1. Neither search nor autocomplete appears to support filtering by fields other than country? We have an app that needs to filter autocompletions by state. A focus point might be sufficient if the autocompleter aggressively sorts results based on distance, but I have yet to meet one that does this (or allows a tuning of the distance function). A rectangular bounding box filter doesn't cut it. I guess I'll have to check out the code and see if this can be added/improved. 2. The API only returns points, with no boundary information, for street addresses. We have an app that uses geocoding to match street addresses to points. But if your address is a bit imprecise and matches an entire stretch of highway (it happens a lot!), that's obviously not a valid match — something like "Highway 66" is just wrong. Google will wisely return a bounds object that you can compute the area for and determine if it's small enough that it's likely a precise enough location (we use 10m2 as the maximum). Unlike Google, Mapzen doesn't even tell you that your match is a "route" — everything is an individual street address. Not sure how trivial this would be to implement, as boundaries would need support from datasets; OSM has the required data, OpenAddresses might not. 3. Street address matching seems a bit patchy. I tried my Brooklyn street address, and it didn't find it. The building was constructed last year, though, so maybe it's old data. Can someone from Mapzen comment?

spectre256 11y ago
Hi! I work on the Mapzen Search team. Glad to hear you like most of what you've seen so far. Your feedback is super useful and I think at least some of it we'll be able to address relatively soon. 1.) We do have a focus point option for autocomplete, with either a soft (will sometimes show you results far away if we think they're really relevant) or a hard (only stuff nearby) radius that can be set. Look at the boundary.circle and focus.point parameters in our /v1/search endpoint docs (https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc/blob/master/search.md https://github.com/pelias/pelias-doc/blob/master/search.md). As you probably realized tuning this for general use is actually quite difficult, but if you're running pelias yourself there's nothing stopping you from tuning to your particular use case. But if you're running your own instance you can also just add a filter by state, since we already have a state field in all our documents. 2.) That's right, even for our datasets that have polygon data (only OSM and Quattroshapes), we just take the center point. This is something we want to add in the future, but it may take a few months at least, since we don't currently have much infrastructure for handling polygon data. We also have another awesome team at Mapzen that is working on a gazetteer project called Who's On First(http://whosonfirst.mapzen.com http://whosonfirst.mapzen.com) that should really help by offering concordance between datasets. 3.) This one's interesting, we should be able to fix it right away because NYC data is generally quite good. Can you check if your building is in OpenStreetMap(http://openstreetmap.org http://openstreetmap.org) or OpenAddresses (http://openaddresses.io http://openaddresses.io has a download for the USA, then find the file for NYC)?