Search for a location using Azure Maps Search services

• 01/19/2021
• 8 minutes to read
• • a
  • D
  • J
  • o
  • p
  • +8

The Azure Maps Search Service is a set of RESTful APIs designed to help developers search addresses, places, and business listings by name, category, and other geographic information. In addition to supporting traditional geocoding, services can also reverse geocode addresses and cross streets based on latitudes and longitudes. Latitude and longitude values returned by the search can be used as parameters in other Azure Maps services, such as Route and Weather services.

In this article, you'll learn how to:

• Request latitude and longitude coordinates for an address (geocode address location) by using the Search Address API.
• Search for an address or Point of Interest (POI) using the Fuzzy Search API.
• Make a Reverse Address Search to translate coordinate location to street address.
• Translate coordinate location into a human understandable cross street by using Search Address Reverse Cross Street API. Most often, this is needed in tracking applications that receive a GPS feed from a device or asset, and wish to know where the coordinate is located.

Prerequisites

1. Make an Azure Maps account
2. Obtain a primary subscription key, also known as the primary key or the subscription key.

This tutorial uses the Postman application, but you may choose a different API development environment.

Request latitude and longitude for an address (geocoding)

In this example, we'll use the Azure Maps Get Search Address API to convert an address into latitude and longitude coordinates. This process is also called geocoding. In addition to returning the coordinates, the response will also return detailed address properties such as street, postal code, municipality, and country/region information.

1. Open the Postman app. Near the top of the Postman app, select New. In the Create New window, select Collection. Name the collection and select the Create button. You'll use this collection for the rest of the examples in this document.

2. To create the request, select New again. In the Create New window, select Request. Enter a Request name for the request. Select the collection you created in the previous step, and then select Save.

3. Select the GET HTTP method in the builder tab and enter the following URL. In this request, we're searching for a specific address: 400 Braod St, Seattle, WA 98109. For this request, and other requests mentioned in this article, replace {Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key} with your primary subscription key.

   https://atlas.microsoft.com/search/address/json?&subscription-key={Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key}&api-version=1.0&language=en-US&query=400 Broad St, Seattle, WA 98109
   

4. Click the blue Send button. The response body will contain data for a single location.

5. Now, we'll search an address that has more than one possible locations. In the Params section, change the query key to 400 Broad, Seattle. Click the blue Send button.

   

6. Next, try setting the query key to 400 Broa.

7. Click the Send button. You can now see that the response includes responses from multiple countries. To geobias results to the relevant area for your users, always add as many location details as possible to the request.

Using Fuzzy Search API

The Azure Maps Fuzzy Search API supports standard single line and free-form searches. We recommend that you use the Azure Maps Search Fuzzy API when you don't know your user input type for a search request. The query input can be a full or partial address. It can also be a Point of Interest (POI) token, like a name of POI, POI category or name of brand. Furthermore, to improve the relevance of your search results, the query results can be constrained by a coordinate location and radius, or by defining a bounding box.

Search for an address using Fuzzy Search

In this example, we'll use Fuzzy Search to search the entire world for pizza. Then, we'll show you how to search over the scope of a specific country. Finally, we'll show you how to use a coordinate location and radius to scope a search over a specific area, and limit the number of returned results.

1. Open the Postman app, click New, and select Request. Enter a Request name for the request. Select the collection you created in the previous section or created a new one, and then select Save.

2. Select the GET HTTP method in the builder tab and enter the following URL. For this request, and other requests mentioned in this article, replace {Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key} with your primary subscription key.

   https://atlas.microsoft.com/search/fuzzy/json?&api-version=1.0&subscription-key={Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key}&language=en-US&query=pizza
   

   Note

   The json attribute in the URL path determines the response format. This article uses json for ease of use and readability. To find other supported response formats, see the format parameter definition in the URI Parameter reference documentation.

3. Click Send and review the response body.

   The ambiguous query string for "pizza" returned 10 point of interest result (POI) in both the "pizza" and "restaurant" categories. Each result includes details such as street address, latitude and longitude values, view port, and entry points for the location. The results are now varied for this query, and are not tied to any reference location.

   In the next step, we'll use the countrySet parameter to specify only the countries/regions for which your application needs coverage. For a complete list of supported countries/regions, see Search Coverage.

4. The default behavior is to search the entire world, potentially returning unnecessary results. Next, we’ll search for pizza only the United States. Add the countrySet key to the Params section, and set its value to US. Setting the countrySet key to US will bound the results to the United States.

   

   The results are now bounded by the country code and the query returns pizza restaurants in the United States.

5. To get an even more targeted search, you can search over the scope of a lat./lon. coordinate pair. In this example, we'll use the lat./lon. of the Seattle Space Needle. Since we only want to return results within a 400-meters radius, we'll add the radius parameter. Also, we'll add the limit parameter to limit the results to the five closest pizza places.

   In the Params section, add the following key/value pairs:

   Key	Value
   lat	47.620525
   lon	-122.349274
   radius	400
   limit	5

6. Click Send. The response includes results for pizza restaurants near the Seattle Space Needle.

Search for a street address using Reverse Address Search

The Azure Maps Get Search Address Reverse API translates coordinates into human readable street addresses. This API is often used for applications that consume GPS feeds and want to discover addresses at specific coordinate points.

In this example, we'll be making reverse searches using a few of the optional parameters that are available. For the full list of optional parameters, see Reverse Search Parameters.

1. In the Postman app, click New, and select Request. Enter a Request name for the request. Select the collection you created in the first section or created a new one, and then select Save.

2. Select the GET HTTP method in the builder tab and enter the following URL. For this request, and other requests mentioned in this article, replace {Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key} with your primary subscription key. The request should look like the following URL:

   https://atlas.microsoft.com/search/address/reverse/json?api-version=1.0&subscription-key={Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key}&language=en-US&query=47.591180,-122.332700&number=1
   

3. Click Send, and review the response body. You should see one query result. The response includes key address information about Safeco Field.

4. Now, we'll add the following key/value pairs to the Params section:

   Key	Value	Returns
   number	1	The response may include the side of the street (Left/Right) and also an offset position for the number.
   returnSpeedLimit	true	Returns the speed limit at the address.
   returnRoadUse	true	Returns road use types at the address. For all possible road use types, see Road Use Types.
   returnMatchType	true	Returns the type of match. For all possible values, see Reverse Address Search Results

   

5. Click Send, and review the response body.

6. Next, we'll add the entityType key, and set its value to Municipality. The entityType key will override the returnMatchType key in the previous step. We'll also need to remove returnSpeedLimit and returnRoadUse since we're requesting information about the municipality. For all possible entity types, see Entity Types.

   

7. Click Send. Compare the results to the results returned in step 5. Because the requested entity type is now municipality, the response does not include street address information. Also, the returned geometryId can be used to request boundary polygon through Azure Maps Get Search Polygon API.

Search for cross street using Reverse Address Cross Street Search

In this example, we'll search for a cross street based on the coordinates of an address.

1. In the Postman app, click New, and select Request. Enter a Request name for the request. Select the collection you created in the first section or created a new one, and then select Save.

2. Select the GET HTTP method in the builder tab and enter the following URL. For this request, and other requests mentioned in this article, replace {Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key} with your primary subscription key. The request should look like the following URL:

   https://atlas.microsoft.com/search/address/reverse/crossstreet/json?&api-version=1.0&subscription-key={Azure-Maps-Primary-Subscription-key}&language=en-US&query=47.591180,-122.332700
   

   

3. Click Send, and review the response body. You'll notice that the response contains a crossStreet value of South Atlantic Street.

Next steps