💡 Today I Learned

Use Google Maps from the PowerShell

Install-Module GoogleMap -Scope CurrentUser

That worked great, now let's try and use it....

"White House", "Eiffel Tower" | Get-GeoCoding

result:

You need to register and get an API key and save it as environment variable $env:GoogleGeocode_API_Key = "YOUR API KEY"

Follow this link and get the API Key - http://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/get-api-key

So I follow that link... I have to accept some terms and conditions. It sees that I have no projects with google maps, and it auto-creates one called "MyProject"

I receive the key eventually (I have an option to limit the acceptable IPs for this key, but don't take it)

Then in powershell I set the environment variable as requested.

$env:GoogleGeocode_API_KEY = "...my API key..."

Thereafter, I try again:

"White House", "Eiffel Tower" | Get-GeoCoding

result:

InputAddress : White House
Address      : The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, USA
Country      : United States
State        : District of Columbia
PostalCode   : 20500
Latitude     : 38.8976763
Longitude    : -77.0365298
Coordinates  : 38.8976763,-77.0365298

InputAddress : Eiffel Tower
Address      : Eiffel Tower, Champ de Mars, 5 Avenue Anatole France, 75007 Paris, France
Country      : France
State        : �le-de-France
PostalCode   : 75007
Latitude     : 48.8583701
Longitude    : 2.2944813
Coordinates  : 48.8583701,2.2944813

Success!

Now I try

Get-GeoLocation

This one fails with a familiar though slightly different error...

You need to register and get an API key and save it as environment variable $env:GoogleGeoloc_API_Key = "YOUR API KEY"
Follow this link and get the API Key - https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/get-api-key

At C:\Users\user1\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\GoogleMap\1.0.0.2\GoogleMap.psm1:703 char:9
+         Throw "You need to register and get an API key and save it as ...
+         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
		+ CategoryInfo          : OperationStopped: (You need to reg...get-api-key
 :String) [], RuntimeException
		+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : You need to register and get an API key and save it as environment variable $env:GoogleGeoloc_API
	 _Key = "YOUR API KEY"
Follow this link and get the API Key - https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/get-api-key

i.e. This time it's GoogleGeoloc_API_Key (not GoogleGeocode_API_Key)

Can I use my geo coding API key?

I try that, but it fails.

Looking at the code itself I see it is checking

!$env:GooglePlaces_API_Key

So I'll set that!

Later in the code it mentions $env:GoogleGeoloc_API_Key -- so I think it needs BOTH set (and the reference to GooglePlaces_API_Key is a bug... you need to set it because of the bug...)

Okay -- I went to that url https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geolocation/get-api-key and basically enabled the GeoLocation API for the project that I've created at developers.google.com.

Try

Get-GeoLocation

And it returned the address of the house next door.

That is spooky!

What we've sent to google is the first two MAC addresses we could find from set of Wifi access points, it's handed back a lat/long, and then we've asked for an adddress based off that.

What if I modify the code to send ALL of the MAC addresses we have?

To do that in isolation I changed this line of code:

$body = @{wifiAccessPoints = @{macAddress = $($WiFiAccessPointMACAdddress[0])},@{macAddress = $($WiFiAccessPointMACAdddress[1])}}|ConvertTo-Json

$body = "{`"wifiAccessPoints`":[" + (($WiFiAccessPointMACAdddress | % { "{`"macAddress`": `"$_`"}" }) -join ",`n") + "]"

But the resulting address that was returned was not any more accurate. So I will leave the code as it was.

Okay, moving on to Get-Direction... similar error:

You need to register and get an API key from below link and have to setup an Environment variable like
$env:GoogleDirection_API_Key = "YOUR API KEY" to make this function work. You can save this $Env variable in your profile, so
that it automatically loads when you open powershell console.
API Key Link - https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/directions/get-api-key

Again I visited the URI provided and then all was good.

When I tried:

Get-Direction -from "250 Adelaide St, Brisbane" -to "30 Mary St, Brisbane" | ft -autosize

One of the directions read:

Turn right onto Mary StDestination will be on the right

Hmmm. No space between 'St' and 'Destination' -- what is happening there?

I found this method was preparing the text:

# To Clear unwanted data from the String
Function Remove-UnwantedString($Str)
{
	$str = $Str.replace('<div style="font-size:0.9em">','')
	$str = $str.replace('</div>','')
	$str = $str.replace('<b>','')
	$str = $str.replace('</b>','')
	$str = $str.replace('&nbsp;','')
	Return $str
}

And when I bypassed that method, the result was:

Turn <b>right</b> onto <b>Mary St</b><div style="font-size:0.9em">Destination will be on the right</div>

So I updated that method to put a single space where that &lt;div... had been.

# To Clear unwanted data from the String
Function Remove-UnwantedString($Str)
{
		$str = $Str.replace('<div style="font-size:0.9em">',' ') # space here
		$str = $str.replace('</div>','')
		$str = $str.replace('<b>','')
		$str = $str.replace('</b>','')
		$str = $str.replace('&nbsp;',' ') # space here
		Return $str
}

And then I got the result I was expecting.

Finally onto the fun one....

("cyberhub, dlf phase 3, Gurgaon" | Get-GeoCoding).Coordinates | Get-NearbyPlace -Radius 3000 -TypeOfPlace bar -Keyword beer

This gave no result at first. It just returned nothing (no error either)

(Perhaps ($status -eq 'OK') was false?)

I found I had to visit https://developers.google.com/places/web-service/get-api-key

Then it started to work.

Finally, to find local pizza joints....

(Get-GeoLocation -WithCoordinates).Coordinates | Get-NearbyPlace -Radius 2000 -TypeOfPlace Restaurant -Keyword Pizza | % { $_.Name + " (" + $_.Address + ")" }

And nearest beer:

(Get-GeoLocation -WithCoordinates).Coordinates | Get-NearbyPlace -Radius 1000 -TypeOfPlace Bar -Keyword Beer | % Name

...returned:

Pizza Capers (658 Ipswich Road, Annerley)
Puccini Pizza Pasta Gelati Bar (Shop 2/6 Gapap Street, Tarragindi)
Mediterranean Flavours - Gourmet Pizza and Pasta (1A 398 Tarragindi Road, Tarragindi)

Fantastic!

Source