When working on a mapping feature on my Singular Project, I encountered a great problem when working with coordinates geo-located cities. I could not find a clean API that enables finding cities by their coordinates or simply an autocomplete by city name. I was really surprised to see that this kind of API did not exist. Usually, the APIs I found did not offer simple features or lacked a lot of cities.

I decided to buil my own API.

I found three files with a total of more than 200,000 cities around the world with their coordinates. I treated the data with a python script, gathered the three files into one csv, and created my database.

Then I created a simple NodeJS server to acccess this data in a easy and safe way.

I posted the API on RapidAPI hub for developers to use it.

To have a full unlimited access, there is a 10$ plan for the coordinates endpoint. Other endpoints are totally free.

Here is the link to the Rapid API page: Rapid API Link

Here is the link to the Swagger: Swagger Link

Date

May 2022

Technology

  • NodeJS
  • Swagger
  • Python

Github

https://github.com/gautiermarechal/cities-api