PHP Google Geocode with curl refusing to work

Question

I'm currently trying to get the lat and lng parameters for an address through the use of the Google Geocode API in a PHP page.

I currently have the following code, but somehow it does not work through php while copying the generated address into Google Chrome does seem to work.

Can anybody see the error in the code below?

Thanks in advance!

Tom

====================================================

The returned error is:

( [error_message] => The 'sensor' parameter specified in the request must be set to either 'true' or 'false'. [results] => Array ( ) [status] => REQUEST_DENIED ) An error has occured: 1

Old code with obsolete parts:

$googleQuery = $_POST['txtAdres'] . ',+' . $_POST['txtPostcode'] . '+' . $_POST['txtStad'] . ',+' . $_POST['txtLand'];
$googleQuery = str_replace(' ', '+', $googleQuery);

// retrieve the latitude & longitude from the address
$url = 'http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=' . urlencode($googleQuery) . '&sensor=false';
$url = htmlspecialchars($url);

echo $url;

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
if ($response['status'] != 'OK') {
  echo 'An error has occured: ' . print_r($response);
} else {
    $geometry = $response['results'][0]['geometry'];
    $longitude = $geometry['location']['lat'];
    $latitude = $geometry['location']['lng'];
}

====================================================

EDIT 1 - Added HTML code to each webpage to make it work

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

EDIT 1 - Fixed and working code:

// create address string
$googleQuery = $_POST['txtAdres'] . ', ' . $_POST['txtPostcode'] . ' ' . $_POST['txtStad'] . ', ' . $_POST['txtLand'];

// retrieve the latitude & longitude from the address
$url = 'http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=' . urlencode($googleQuery) . '&sensor=false';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
if ($response['status'] != 'OK') {
  echo 'An error has occured: ' . print_r($response);
} else {
    $geometry = $response['results'][0]['geometry'];
    $longitude = $geometry['location']['lat'];
    $latitude = $geometry['location']['lng'];
}

Glavić · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-02 14:37:40Z

9

You have invalid $url. Don't do $url = htmlspecialchars($url); before calling CURL.

Change:

// ...
$url = htmlspecialchars($url);
echo $url;
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
// ...

to (or smth):

// ...
echo htmlspecialchars($url);
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
// ...

Edit 1:

And your address generating is invalid. Instead of:

$googleQuery = $_POST['txtAdres'] . ',+' . $_POST['txtPostcode'] . '+' . $_POST['txtStad'] . ',+' . $_POST['txtLand'];
$googleQuery = str_replace(' ', '+', $googleQuery);

do:

$googleQuery = $_POST['txtAdres'] . ', ' . $_POST['txtPostcode'] . ' ' . $_POST['txtStad'] . ', ' . $_POST['txtLand'];

Edit 2:

Here is valid example:

$googleQuery = 'Sint Elooisstraat 30, 8800 Roeselare, België';
$url = 'http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=' . urlencode($googleQuery) . '&sensor=false';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
print_r($response);

edited Oct 2, 2013 at 14:37

answered Oct 2, 2013 at 14:13

Glavić

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9 Comments

Tom Over a year ago

Removing the htmlspecialchars made it even worse. Now the error message is { "results" : [], "status" : "INVALID_REQUEST" }

Glavić Over a year ago

Can you show output for varible $url? p.s. I just tested this script and it works for me.

Tom Over a year ago

returned url with test data (without the htmlspecialchars): maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/… The error message is: Array ( [results] => Array ( ) [status] => INVALID_REQUEST ) An error has occured: 1 The url with htmlspecialchars: maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/…

Glavić Over a year ago

Your address is invalid. Try this. Delete that str_replace() that replaces spaces to + and those + from concating post data into string; this is all done by urlecnode() function.

Tom Over a year ago

The output url is now: maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/… and the error message is still: Array ( [results] => Array ( ) [status] => INVALID_REQUEST ) An error has occured: 1

|

n0mad · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-16 16:36:31Z

0

have had this issue within a CLI script.

i had to ensure that my data (which was imported from a CSV file) was UTF-8 encoded:

$address = utf8_encode($address);
$address = rawurlencode($address);

also, a string i had to pass from within the script i had to convert to ASCII first before converting it to UTF-8 (or htmlentities, which also works):

mb_convert_encoding('Österreich', 'US-ASCII', 'UTF-8')

or

htmlentities('Österreich', ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8')

edited Aug 16, 2020 at 16:36

answered Nov 7, 2015 at 23:49

n0mad

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