Geocoding on iPhone

Question

I am totally new to Geocoding on the iPhone, or any other platforms, and I would like to know. Is a default iPhone MapKit a forward or reverse geocoding? And what is forward and reverse mean?

Is there a documentation in the iPhone that explains both? Some examples would be nice too :)

Thanks guys!

Answer 1

You can read about Geocoding in Apple's Location Awareness Programming guide. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/LocationAwarenessPG/UsingGeocoders/UsingGeocoders.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009497-CH4-SW5

iOS supports reverse geocoding, but not forward geocoding. You can implement forward geocoding yourself. How do I do geocoding (NOT reverse geocoding) on iPhone?

Answer 2

Forward - Human readable address to coordinates.

Reverse - Coordinates to readable address.

Do check out SVGeocder. It supports both forward and reverse geocoding via Google API.

The iOS SDK has a MKReverseGeocoder class to support reverse geocoding but I don't find it very accurate.

Answer 3

Geocoding is taking an address (or similar) and translating it into lat/long coordinates.

Reverse GeoCoding is taking a set of coordinates and translating them into an address.

Answer 4

Geo-coding is like if you have an address and you want to get the latitude and longitude of that address.

and reverse Geo-coding is that if you have latitude and longitude and you want to find city or country code or area from which this latitude and longitudes are.

Answer 5

A geocoder object uses a network service to convert between latitude and longitude values and a user-friendly placemark, which is a collection of data such as the street, city, state, and country information.

• Reverse geocoding is the process of converting a latitude and longitude into a placemark.
• Forward geocoding is the process of converting place name information into a latitude and longitude value.

Reverse geocoding is supported in all versions of iOS but forward geocoding is supported only in iOS 5.0 and later.