The goal of nominatimlite is to provide a lightweight interface for geocoding addresses with the Nominatim API. It also allows you to retrieve spatial objects using the sf package.
The full site with examples and vignettes is available at https://dieghernan.github.io/nominatimlite/
What is Nominatim?
Nominatim is a tool for searching OpenStreetMap data by name and address (geocoding) and to generate synthetic addresses for OSM points (reverse geocoding).
Why nominatimlite?
nominatimlite accesses the Nominatim API without depending on curl. In some situations, curl may not be available or accessible, so nominatimlite uses base R functions instead.
Recommended packages
Other packages are more complete and mature than nominatimlite and provide similar features:
- tidygeocoder (Cambon et al. 2021): Provides an interface to geocoding services such as Nominatim, Google, TomTom and Mapbox.
- osmdata (Padgham et al. 2017): Downloads spatial data from OpenStreetMap with the Overpass API.
- arcgeocoder (Hernangómez 2024): Provides a lightweight interface for geocoding with the ArcGIS REST API service.
Usage
sf objects
With nominatimlite you can extract spatial objects:
library(nominatimlite)
# Extract Pizza Hut locations in California.
CA <- geo_lite_sf("California", points_only = FALSE)
pizzahut <- geo_lite_sf(
"Pizza Hut, California",
limit = 50,
custom_query = list(countrycodes = "us")
)
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(CA) +
geom_sf() +
geom_sf(data = pizzahut, col = "red")
You can also extract polygon and line objects when the Nominatim API provides them, using the option points_only = FALSE:
sol_poly <- geo_lite_sf("Statue of Liberty, NY, USA", points_only = FALSE)
ggplot(sol_poly) +
geom_sf()
Geocoding and reverse geocoding
Note: examples are adapted from the tidygeocoder package.
In this first example, we geocode a few addresses with geo_lite():
library(tibble)
# Create a data frame with addresses.
some_addresses <- tribble(
~name, ~addr,
"White House", "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC",
"Transamerica Pyramid", "600 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94111",
"Willis Tower", "233 S Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60606"
)
# Geocode the addresses.
lat_longs <- geo_lite(
some_addresses$addr,
lat = "latitude",
long = "longitude",
progressbar = FALSE
)This example returns only latitude and longitude from the geocoder service. Use full_results = TRUE to return all data from the geocoder service.
| query | latitude | longitude | address |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC | 38.89764 | -77.03655 | White House, 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Ward 2, Washington, District of Columbia, 20500, United States |
| 600 Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94111 | 37.79519 | -122.40279 | Transamerica Pyramid, 600, Montgomery Street, Financial District, South of Market, San Francisco, California, 94111, United States |
| 233 S Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60606 | 41.87874 | -87.63596 | Willis Tower, 233, South Wacker Drive, Financial District, Loop, Chicago, South Chicago Township, Cook County, Illinois, 60606, United States |
To perform reverse geocoding (obtaining addresses from geographic coordinates), use reverse_geo_lite(). The arguments are similar to geo_lite(), but now we specify the input data columns with the lat and long arguments. The dataset used here is from the geocoder query above. The single-line address is returned in a column named with the address argument.
reverse <- reverse_geo_lite(
lat = lat_longs$latitude,
long = lat_longs$longitude,
address = "address_found",
progressbar = FALSE
)| address_found | lat | lon |
|---|---|---|
| White House, 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Ward 2, Washington, District of Columbia, 20500, United States | 38.89764 | -77.03655 |
| Sky Bar, 600, Montgomery Street, Financial District, South of Market, San Francisco, California, 94111, United States | 37.79519 | -122.40254 |
| 233, South Wacker Drive, Financial District, Loop, Chicago, South Chicago Township, Cook County, Illinois, 60606, United States | 41.87874 | -87.63589 |
For more advanced users, see the Nominatim documentation for the available parameters.