Are the formatted addresses of a Google location unique?

Posted by Hans on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Hans
Published on 2010-05-07T10:05:36Z Indexed on 2010/05/07 10:08 UTC
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I want our users of a web site to be able to

  1. either search and pick an address or mark a location on a map
  2. decide how accurate this address/location is

I am in the process of implementing the first part with jquery, jquery ui's autocomplete, google map, and google geocoder. For the second part I will generate a radiobutton list based on the address elements/alternatives of the first part on the client side with jquery.

My concern, however, is how to convey the choices to the server side. The Google geocoder includes a number of useful metadata that I want to store.

  • A possibility is to store the complete json object in a hidden form field, but I can't trust the users. Such a solution would enable an unfriendly insertion of spam in the data.
  • If the addresses/locations would have a unique identifyer I could store just these and let the server refetch/evaluate the data. The alternative geonames.org web service has such ids. But are for example the formatted addresses of a Google location unique?

Any tips?

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