{"id":281,"date":"2022-01-17T17:07:24","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T17:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.staginginstance.com\/?p=281"},"modified":"2022-01-18T17:46:30","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T17:46:30","slug":"how-to-use-google-places-api","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geekabhi.com\/blog\/how-to-use-google-places-api\/","title":{"rendered":"How to use Google places API"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Google places API is a highly valuable resource if you’re looking for certain types of places in a certain region (eg. an Indian restaurant in New York), identifying a business, generating leads for a list of professionals (eg electricians, plumbers, etc). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Google definition, the Places API is a service that returns information about places using HTTP requests. Places are defined within this API as establishments, geographic locations, or prominent points of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google has moved everything related to geolocation, places, maps under a hood named “Google Maps Platform”, and is not free anymore. Over the years, it was free until Google realized the potential of these services and now requires you to set up a billing account before you can actually use it. Though they do provide a $200 credit, you still need to put in a card.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So to get started:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. create an account at Google’s Cloud Platform<\/a> with billing. <\/li>
  2. Once set up, please go to the API Console<\/a>, and create a project.<\/li>
  3. Once our project is created, we can actually decide which apis we want to use and enable only those. This is important as we don’t want to enable the apis we won’t use as if the API keys ever gets compromised, the key will only limit to certain API only and not to the whole API collection. This is how it will look once APIs are enabled. \"\"<\/li>
  4. Now, we have the APIs we want to use, we can start using them. You can find all the documentation here: https:\/\/developers.google.com\/maps\/documentation. We will be using places API in this article, but you can use whichever API you want based on your requirement.<\/li>
  5. Before we go further into API development, we need to generate API keys. To create keys, go to: https:\/\/console.cloud.google.com\/google\/maps-apis\/credentials<\/a> and click “Create Credentials” button. It will create an API key for you and will ask you to restrict the API key. Click “Restrict key” to go to the restrictions settings page. Choose the appropriate restrictions based on the app you will be integrating API with.<\/li>
  6. Now to use API we can either select and SDK (JS, IOS, ) or just simply use HTTP API calls from the language of your choice.<\/li>
  7. Here are the list of place requests types available on Google to query places and its metadata: