PHP Geocoding Quick Start Guide - XLRoutes

Installation

When you sign up with XLRoutes on Heroku, you will be provided with a unique username and password that you can use when configuring your proxy service in your application:

http://username:password@proxy.xlroutes.com:9292

We recommend you store the connection string in an environment variable xlroutes_URL to maintain compatibility with platforms like Heroku.

You can test your proxy setup using curl:

$ curl -x username:password@proxy.xlroutes.com:9292 http://www.google.com/

Integration

PHP cURL is the easiest way to make HTTP requests via a proxy. The below shows an example of making a geocoding request:

                <?php

function lookup($string){
  $xlroutes_env = getenv("xlroutes_URL"); 
  $xlroutes = parse_url($xlroutes_env);

  $proxyUrl = $xlroutes['host'].":".$xlroutes['port'];
  $proxyAuth = $xlroutes['user'].":".$xlroutes['pass']; 
 
   $string = str_replace (" ", "+", urlencode($string));
   $details_url = "http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=".$string."&sensor=false";
 
   $ch = curl_init();
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $details_url);
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxyUrl);
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
   curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, $proxyAuth);
   $response = json_decode(curl_exec($ch), true);
 
   // If Status Code is ZERO_RESULTS, OVER_QUERY_LIMIT, REQUEST_DENIED or INVALID_REQUEST
   if ($response['status'] != 'OK') {
    return null;
   }
 
   print_r($response);
   $geometry = $response['results'][0]['geometry'];
 
    $longitude = $geometry['location']['lng'];
    $latitude = $geometry['location']['lat'];
 
    $array = array(
        'latitude' => $latitude,
        'longitude' => $longitude,
        'location_type' => $geometry['location_type'],
    );
 
    return $array;
 
}
 
$city = 'San Francisco, USA';
 
$array = lookup($city);
print_r($array);
 
?>

              