Google Geocoding -- parsing address_components that may return differently
geocoding, google-geocoder, google-maps, javascript
Solution
Why not have your DB mirror only the following keys?
street_number -> address street number
route -> the street name
locality -> the city/town
administrative_area_level_3 -> the city/town
administrative_area_level_1 -> the state
postal_code -> zip/postal code
Where a `locality` exists, use that in your request (as it appears to deliver the more detailed info - http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/geocoding/#JSON )
Where no `street name` or `locality` exists, request `administrative_area_level_3` and `administrative_area_level_1`
This would provide you with a full human-readable postal address when the info exists or just the city/state for a sublocality (e.g. beach), as you mentioned in one of the comments.
**I'm assuming you only care about the US.
Problem
I'm using Google Maps V3 api. I am submitting an address search to return the proper geocoded result including the address, name of establishment, and lat/lngs. My problem is that the response from the geocoder can be formatted differently. It always follows the same structure, but some responses use different keys for the address_components data structure. For Example, some searches result in: ``` establishment -> location name street_number -> address street number route -> the street name locality -> the city administrative_area_level_1 -> the state postal_code -> zip/postal code ``` whereas, if i were to search a general area, such as "Hampton Beach, NH" i would receive: ``` sublocality -> beach name / area administrative_area_level_3 -> city/town name administrative_area_level_1 -> the state postal_code -> zip/postal code ``` as you can see the two responses have their differences. Is there a known jquery library that can be used to handle these different responses to return a data set of the address components that can be used for a human-readable way? I will note that the response also returns a "formatted_address" type, which returns it like: "Hampton Beach, NH 03842, USA" OR "Boston University, 1 University Rd, Boston, MA 02215-1407, USA" As you can see, these too are pretty different. I could split by comma, but I'd like to use the actual address_components for a flawless database insert.