Google Maps Search and Get Coordinates

When reading the documentation for Google Maps Places autocomplete, under “optimizations”, Google recommends using their geocode service instead of Text Search if you want to get the coordinates of the place.

In their own example on that page, Google is using the autocomplete API to search for locations, when all I needed was the place search API, specifically text search.

const GOOGLE_MAPS_BASE = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api';
const GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY = 'https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/credentials';

// example code, remember to add error handling for your code
async function searchAndGetCoordExample() {
    const results = await placeSearch('Fiera Capital Toronto');
    const coordinates = [results[0].geometry.location.lat, results[0].geometry.location.lng];
}

export async function placeSearch({ query, language = 'en', limit = 10, lat, lon } = {}) {
    /*
    https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/places/web-service/search-text
    */
    const locationParam = (lat !== undefined && lon !== undefined) ? `&location=${lat},${lon}` : '';

    const params = new URLSearchParams({
        query,
        language,
        key: GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY,
    });

    return await fetchTimeout(`${GOOGLE_MAPS_BASE}/place/textsearch/json?input=${params.toString()}${locationParam}&key=${GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY}`).then(r => r.json());
}

async function fetchTimeout(resource, options = {}) {
    // set timeout to 8 seconds from 300 seconds
    // throws Timeout error (error.name === 'AbortError')
    const { timeout = 8000 } = options;
    options.headers = { 'User-Agent': 'MyApp', ...options.headers }
    const controller = new AbortController();
    const id = setTimeout(() => controller.abort(), timeout);
    const response = await fetch(resource, {
        ...options,
        signal: controller.signal
    });
    clearTimeout(id);
    return response;
}

2023-Oct-02

https://blog.elijahlopez.ca/posts/google-maps-search-and-get-coordinates/ Elijah Lopez

#Tutorial