Google http://maps.google.com/maps/geo query with non-english characters

Question

I'm creating a Python (using urllib2) parser of addresses with non-english characters in it. The goal is to find coordinates of every address.

When I open this url in Firefox:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=Czech%20Republic%2010000%20Male%C5%A1ice&output=csv

it is converted (changes in address box) to

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=Czech Republic 10000 Malešice&output=csv

and returns

200,6,50.0865113,14.4918052

which is a correct result.

However, if I open the same url (encoded, with %20 and such) in urllib2 (or Opera browser), the result is

200,4,49.7715220,13.2955410

which is incorrect. How can I open the first url in urllib2 to get the "200,6,50.0865113,14.4918052" result?

Edit:

Code used

import urllib2

psc = '10000'
name = 'Malešice'
url = 'http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=%s&output=csv' % urllib2.quote('Czech Republic %s %s' % (psc, name))

response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
data = response.read()

print 'Parsed url %s, result %s\n' % (url, data)

output

Parsed url http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=Czech%20Republic%2010000%20Male%C5%A1ice&output=csv, result 200,4,49.7715220,13.2955410

Could you specify the exact line of code with urllib2.open please (as you try)? — sergzach
– sergzach, Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 16:26
Possible duplicate: percent encoding URL with python (for use with Google Maps API). — Lukas Graf
– Lukas Graf, Commented Sep 27, 2012 at 16:47

Lukas Graf · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-27 17:32:11Z

I can reproduce this behavior, and at first I was dumbfounded as to why it's happening. Closer inspection of the HTTP requests with wireshark showed that the requests sent by Firefox (not surprisingly) contain a couple more HTTP-Headers.

In the end it turned out it's the Accept-Language header that makes the difference. You only get the correct result if

an Accept-Language header is set
and it has a non-english language listed first (the priorities don't seem to matter)

So, for example this Accept-Language header works:

headers = {'Accept-Language': 'de-ch,en'}

To summarize, modified like this your code works for me:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import urllib2

psc = '10000'
name = 'Malešice'
url = 'http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=%s&output=csv' % urllib2.quote('Czech Republic %s %s' % (psc, name))
headers = {'Accept-Language': 'de-ch,en'}

req = urllib2.Request(url, None, headers)
response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
data = response.read()

print 'Parsed url %s, result %s\n' % (url, data)

Note: In my opinion, this is a bug in Google's geocoding API. The Accept-Language header indicates what languages the user agent prefers the content in, but it shouldn't have any effect on how the request is interpreted.

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