Not getting any json results from openstreet map using Nominatim and php file_get_contents() or Curl

Question

I am trying to get results from a json file fetched from openstreetmap.org. When entering the url into the browser I see the json file beeing returned inside the browser. IfI try to read the json using a php script, then nothing happens. Not if I use file_get_contents, but also not if I use curl.

function geocode($address){

    // url encode the address
    $address = urlencode($address);

    //Url openstreetmap
    $url = "https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/?addressdetails=1&q=$address&format=json&limit=1";

    //  Initiate curl
    $ch = curl_init();
    
    // Will return the response, if false it print the response
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    
    // Set the url
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);

    // Execute
    $result=curl_exec($ch);

    // Closing
    curl_close($ch);

    // Will dump a beauty json :3
    var_dump(json_decode($result, true));

    return json_decode($result, true);

}

And also if I use file_get_contents, there are no results:

function geocode($address){

    // url encode the address
    $address = urlencode($address);

    $url = "http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search/?format=json&addressdetails=1&q={$address}&format=json&limit=1";

    // get the json response
    $resp_json = file_get_contents($url);

    return json_decode($resp_json, true);

}

What am I possibly doing wrong?

Answer 1

I've changed your code according Nominatim Usage Policy.

In short, CURL is better method for you but have to add at least these HTTP request headers:

• HTTP Referer
• User-Agent

And it's also important to not send more than 1 request per second (read the Usage Policy link above).

I've changed your code so this should work:

<?php

function geocode($address){
    $address = urlencode($address);

    $url = "https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/?addressdetails=1&q=$address&format=json&limit=1";

    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2490.86 Safari/537.36");

    $result = curl_exec($ch);

    curl_close($ch);

    return json_decode($result, true);
}

echo "<pre>";
print_r(geocode("Time Square, New York City"));

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => Array
        (
            [place_id] => 162597874
            [licence] => Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. https://osm.org/copyright
            [osm_type] => way
            [osm_id] => 304980452
            [boundingbox] => Array
                (
                    [0] => 41.7382344
                    [1] => 41.7384706
                    [2] => -74.0371548
                    [3] => -74.0367398
                )

            [lat] => 41.73835325
            [lon] => -74.03694730280651
            [display_name] => Time Square, 652, NY 299, Elting Corners, Lloyd, Town of Lloyd, Ulster County, New York, 12561, United States
            [class] => building
            [type] => yes
            [importance] => 0.401
            [address] => Array
                (
                    [building] => Time Square
                    [house_number] => 652
                    [road] => NY 299
                    [hamlet] => Elting Corners
                    [town] => Lloyd
                    [municipality] => Town of Lloyd
                    [county] => Ulster County
                    [state] => New York
                    [postcode] => 12561
                    [country] => United States
                    [country_code] => us
                )

        )

)