HTTP request (Google Maps Geocoding)

[eluser]RS71[/eluser]
Hello

How can I use Google's Geocoding service to retrieve some lat & lng information and pass it php/CI?

Example url:

http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=new+yo...ur_api_key

Also, how would php deal with timeouts or the possibility of the service being down?

Thanks in advance

[eluser]rossmurphy[/eluser]
Is xml returned with this call? If so you could use PHP's http_build_query() function then parse the response xml using php's simpleXML..

Code:

$url = 'http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?';

$fields = array('q' => $q,
                'output' => $output,
                'sensor' => $sensor,
                'key' => $key
);

$query_string = $url . http_build_query($fields, '', '&');