Get country from latitude longitude

I don't know if it works with google maps, but there is a web service that returns a country code and takes as parameters the lat and long.

Here is an example:
http://api.geonames.org/countryCodeJSON?lat=49.03&lng=10.2&username=demo

Returns a JSON data: {"languages":"de","distance":"0","countryCode":"DE","countryName":"Germany"}

I also found a little description:

The iso country code of any given point.

  • Webservice Type: REST
  • Url: ws.geonames.org/countryCode?
  • Parameters: lat, lng, type, lang, radius (buffer in km for closest country in coastal areas)
  • Result: returns the iso country code for the given latitude/longitude

With the parameter type=xml this service returns an xml document with iso country code and country name. The optional parameter lang can be used to specify the language the country name should be in. JSON output is produced with type=JSON

See the docs

Edit: Please note that demo is just a demonstration user and you should create a user account at http://www.geonames.org/login in order to use the service.


<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://j.maxmind.com/app/geoip.js" ></script>
    <br />Country Code:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_country_code());</script>
    <br />Country Name:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_country_name());</script>
    <br />City:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_city());</script>
    <br />Region:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_region());</script>
    <br />Region Name:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_region_name());</script>
    <br />Latitude:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_latitude());</script>
    <br />Longitude:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_longitude());</script>
    <br />Postal Code:
    <script type="text/javascript">document.write(geoip_postal_code());</script>

</div>
</form>

If a self-contained library (i.e. no server / internet connection, and fast) is desirable, and only country information is required, the following library based on openstreetmap data can be useful - https://github.com/hlaw/codegrid-js

<script type="text/javascript" src="[path]/codegrid.js"></script>
grid = codegrid.CodeGrid(); // initialize

grid.getCode (lat, lng, function (err, code) { ... });

The callback is called with code, the country code for the latlng.


Google Geocoding API provides these results in JSON format. It has a free tier but you will need to pay for unlimited requests to the API.

The API link to the request will look like this:

'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?latlng=11.2742848,75.8013801&key=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE'