Introducing Google's Geocoding Service

location based services

As you've learned in previous installments of this ongoing series (tutorial 1, tutorial 2, tutorial 3, tutorial 4), the Google Maps API provides an amazingly capable solution for building compelling spatial applications. Yet one of the glaring omissions from the API has been the ability to map locations without the use of third-party solutions for converting mailing addresses to their corresponding coordinates; just as is the case with the Yahoo! and Microsoft Virtual Earth mapping APIs locations can only be pinpointed using their latitudinal and longitudinal descriptors. Whereas the latter two solutions have offered built-in conversion capabilities for some time, Google Maps API users have had to rely on services such as geocoder.us or the US Census Bureau TIGER/Line data for such tasks.
This longstanding feature request was satisfied on June 11 when Google quietly added geocoding capabilities to the API. What's more, this feature isn't limited to the U.S.; street-level geocoding is also offered for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain! While limited to 50,000 daily requests, it's fair to say such constraints won't affect most users, particularly if caching is implemented. This tutorial shows you how to use this new feature, further streamlining your use of this wonderful API.
Prerequisites
Before you can use Google's geocoding feature, you'll need to register for an API key. This process was covered in the first installment of this series, therefore please refer to that tutorial for further information. Also, the geocoding class is only available in version 2 of the Google Maps API. Although this new version is intended to be almost completely backwards compatible, you must reference the appropriate version number within the

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