Did this past weekend’s East Coast blizzard leave you with the feeling of wishing you could pinpoint where you built that wicked igloo during Snowstorm Jonas?
Not to worry, every igloo deserves a place on the map now - with or without specific geo-coordinates to set it apart. CartoDB’s data services team has created an updated and even better Geocoder API, taking a major leap towards the democratization of location based services.
Now CartoDB users will have the possibility of turning string data columns into numerical coordinates. Just as we offer free basemaps, the Geocoder API is part of the package. The functionality was previously only available through the Editor and now users can access it from the Platform.
The Geocoder API will let developers, partners, and techies georeference their data on their 3rd party applications using a set of functions on the SQL API - this is the main differentiator from the already existing geocoding functionality at CartoDB.
The CartoDB Geocoder API provides different levels of granularity and lets you convert plain text to countries, administrative boundaries, named places, and zip code geometries for free – programatically. It also allows for street level geocoding at a set price per 1000 rows (credits will go against your quota). For Google users, it provides integration with the Google Geocoder as well.
Happy data mapping!