a few basic questions

@ lyricnz

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I had tried variations of the code you suggested before posting without favorable results.

You make excellent points concerning the approach and I am planning to make individual queries during a node addition from the geonames DB for the moment. I will then work on creating our own tables and refresh from the geoname dumps.

Regarding the geonames drupal module and the suggested code, here is what I have done as test:

First the city:

//try it with drupal module
$d_query = array('name_equals' => 'Miami', 'adminCode1' => 'FL', 'country' => 'US', 'fcode' => 'PPL');
$d_city_results = geonames_query('search', $d_query);

$d_city_valid = FALSE;
if ($d_city_valid->total_results_count >= 1) {
	$d_city_valid = TRUE;
}

print "checking the drupal fetch --> the city is ".$d_city_valid."<br />";

This does not work as shown below.

Examining the returned data (only the relevant section is shown):

dpr($d_city_results);

stdClass Object
(
    [standalone] => no
    [total_results_count] => 0
    [service] => search
    [request] => Array
        (
            [url] => http://ws.geonames.net/search?username=ME&adminCode1=FL&name_equals=Miami&country=US&featureClass=P&maxRows=15
            [bytes] => 255
            [cached] => result
            [seconds] => 0.00788307189941
        )

    [query] => Array
        (
            [admincode1] => FL
            [name_equals] => Miami
            [fcode] => PPL
            [country] => US
            [startrow] => 0
            [featureclass] => p
            [type] => xml
            [maxrows] => 15
        )
. . . and so on

However, doing the same without using the module (with somewhat more ponderous code):

$city = "Chicago";
$country = "US";
$state = "IL";

$city_query = "name_equals=".$city."&adminCode1=".$state."&country=".$country."&maxRows=1";
$url = "http://ws.geonames.org/searchJSON?".$city_query;
$check_city = drupal_http_request($url, $headers = array(), $method = 'GET', $data = NULL, $retry = 3);

//decode the json
$city_results = json_decode($check_city->data);

$city_valid = FALSE;
if ($city_results->totalResultsCount === 1) {
	$city_valid = TRUE;
}
print "checking the http fetch --> the city is ".$city_valid."<br />";

This does work - - noting the camel-case in the returned object for totalResultsCount (versus underscore in the Drupal case).

Obviously, I would like to use the drupal module, but I cannot seem to make this query work.

I have similar results for zip - - this works:

$city = "Chicago";
$country = "US";
$state = "IL";
$zip = 60615;

$zip_query = "&placename=".$city."&adminCode1=".$state."&postalcode=".$zip."&maxRows=200";
$url = "http://ws.geonames.org/postalCodeSearchJSON?".$zip_query;
$check_zip = drupal_http_request($url, $headers = array(), $method = 'GET', $data = NULL, $retry = 3);

$zip_results = json_decode($check_zip->data);

//this returns an object with the results in an array - - so get  the array and count the results
$postal_codes_array = $zip_results->postalCodes;
$postal_codes_array_length = count($postal_codes_array);

//then test if this is greater than 0

Whereas this does not work (in any variation I tried):

$d_zip_valid = FALSE;
$d_zip_query = array('postalcode' => 60615, 'placename' => 'Chicago', 'adminCode1' => 'IL');
$d_zip_results = geonames_query('postalcodesearch', $d_zip_query);

if ($d_zip_results->total_results_count === 1) {
	$d_zip_valid = TRUE;
}

So - - net-net: thank you so much for your help and consideration. I have to say that I do not understand why the drupal-based query (that is, the geonames module-based) query does not work, and I am sure it must be me since this (simple) application of the api must have been tested.

Again, suggestion welcome as I would prefer to do this within Drupal.

If you are interested, I will let you know as I continue to try to get this to work.

Thank again.

N