Geocoding information from a web crawler with Javascript

Question

I've built some web crawlers to gather information about Hijacking Hotspots in South Africa... I've retrieved location information, but its all listed in a vague format, eg: "The William Nicol Drive offramp from the N1 from the Sandton side" ... Each location is formatted in JSON format right now.

My Problem:

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I want to iterate through a list of all these descriptions/locations and retrieve rough GPS coordinates for each one. Would using the Google API with Javascript be the best option for achieving this? And does anyone have some code examples to demonstrate how I should go about getting this done with Javascript. Please keep in mind that I'm only an intermediate Javascript coder.

I need the quickest most efficient method of getting this done because I'm on a tight deadline and I'll have to use this method for a few other purposes as well.

Sample JSON Data:

{"data":{"area":"Cape Town","location":"Corner of Alice St and Voortrekker Road", "gps":"?"}}

Answer 1

It would be great if you can provide a sample of your JSON response.

The Getting Started page for Maps API have samples that will guide you through the whole process of what you want to develop.

The easiest way to do it is if the JSON response you have have lat/long coordinates. This way, you iterate through the items and place Markers to the map.

If no coordinates are available, but there's a placeId on the response, you can try out the Places API . You'll just need to provide the placeId in PlacesService.getDetails() and the response will contain an object with the lat/long coordinates - which you'll add into the marker.