I want to use the Foursquare-API to get venues in a given city. The API has two endpoints that could help me with my problem:
venue/explore and venue/search
Now the problem is, that both of them are missing features I would need that the other endpoint has. For example, I cannot use the explore endpoint, because I'm not able to pass category ids to the foursquare api to search only in given categories.
So now I already have to use the search endpoint, but the search endpoint has another problem. The intent parameter. The intent parameter accepts checkin, browse, global, match
checkin finds pois that the user would check in at the current moment in time. Problem: I want to run a cronjob at night, so it would never find a museum, 'cause it's probably closed at night.
browse has the problem, that I have to pass a radius parameter. But since not every city has the same radius I would also find results of other cities in my search request. As example, if I search for pois in Cologne, and have a radius of 30km, I would also find POIs in Duesseldorf. But in some other cities the radius of 30km is a good one and I would only find POIs in the given city. I can't tell for sure that I have the correct radius.
global searches independent of the location so it's also useless
match doesn't include categories so it's also useless
Ok, let's sum it up together, what I need to do
I need to find Locations that are in a certain city, and have specific categories only! I built myself this url here to query data from foursquare
This now returns venues from Tokyo: (I limited it to 3, so we don't have too much data displayed here)
{
"meta":{
"code":200
},
"response":{
"venues":[
{
"id":"4b7af3d1f964a520e3472fe3",
"name":"伊勢丹 新宿店 (Isetan Shinjuku)",
"contact":{
"phone":"+81333521111",
"formattedPhone":"+81 3-3352-1111"
},
"location":{
"address":"新宿3-14-1",
"lat":35.69167888630371,
"lng":139.70466434955597,
"postalCode":"160-0022",
"cc":"JP",
"city":"新宿区",
"state":"東京都",
"country":"Japan",
"formattedAddress":[
"新宿3-14-1",
"新宿区, Tōkyō",
"160-0022",
"Japan"
]
},
"categories":[
{
"id":"4bf58dd8d48988d1f6941735",
"name":"Kaufhaus",
"pluralName":"Kaufhäuser",
"shortName":"Kaufhaus",
"icon":{
"prefix":"https:\/\/ss3.4sqi.net\/img\/categories_v2\/shops\/departmentstore_",
"suffix":".png"
},
"primary":true
}
],
"verified":false,
"stats":{
"checkinsCount":38525,
"usersCount":14542,
"tipCount":104
},
"url":"http:\/\/www.isetan.co.jp\/icm2\/jsp\/store\/shinjuku\/",
"specials":{
"count":0,
"items":[
]
},
"hereNow":{
"count":0,
"summary":"Keiner hier",
"groups":[
]
},
"referralId":"v-1416841962"
},
{
"id":"4b6a8c00f964a5204fd82be3",
"name":"東急 田園都市線 渋谷駅",
"contact":{
"phone":"+81354585143",
"formattedPhone":"+81 3-5458-5143"
},
"location":{
"address":"道玄坂2-1-1",
"lat":35.65325468817092,
"lng":139.69734217064342,
"cc":"JP",
"city":"渋谷区",
"state":"東京都",
"country":"Japan",
"formattedAddress":[
"道玄坂2-1-1",
"渋谷区, Tōkyō",
"Japan"
]
},
"categories":[
{
"id":"4bf58dd8d48988d129951735",
"name":"Bahnhof",
"pluralName":"Bahnhöfe",
"shortName":"Bahnhof",
"icon":{
"prefix":"https:\/\/ss3.4sqi.net\/img\/categories_v2\/travel\/trainstation_",
"suffix":".png"
},
"primary":true
}
],
"verified":false,
"stats":{
"checkinsCount":51145,
"usersCount":6686,
"tipCount":21
},
"specials":{
"count":0,
"items":[
]
},
"hereNow":{
"count":0,
"summary":"Keiner hier",
"groups":[
]
},
"referralId":"v-1416841962"
},
{
"id":"543365cd498e6a226ce59c11",
"name":"la kagu ラカグ",
"contact":{
"phone":"+81352276977",
"formattedPhone":"+81 3-5227-6977",
"twitter":"la_kagu",
"facebook":"470802349690219",
"facebookUsername":"lakagu.kagurazaka",
"facebookName":"ラカグ la kagu"
},
"location":{
"address":"矢来町67",
"lat":35.70377775661292,
"lng":139.73318235755823,
"postalCode":"162-0805",
"cc":"JP",
"city":"Tokyo",
"state":"東京都",
"country":"Japan",
"formattedAddress":[
"矢来町67",
"新宿区, Tōkyō",
"162-0805",
"Japan"
]
},
"categories":[
{
"id":"4bf58dd8d48988d1f8941735",
"name":"Möbel- \/ Einrichtungsgeschäft",
"pluralName":"Möbel- \/ Einrichtungsgeschäfte",
"shortName":"Möbel \/ Einrichtung",
"icon":{
"prefix":"https:\/\/ss3.4sqi.net\/img\/categories_v2\/shops\/furniture_",
"suffix":".png"
},
"primary":true
}
],
"verified":false,
"stats":{
"checkinsCount":468,
"usersCount":429,
"tipCount":5
},
"url":"http:\/\/www.lakagu.com",
"specials":{
"count":0,
"items":[
]
},
"hereNow":{
"count":0,
"summary":"Keiner hier",
"groups":[
]
},
"referralId":"v-1416841962"
}
],
"geocode":{
"what":"",
"where":"35.6894875,139.69170639999993",
"feature":{
"cc":"JP"
},
"parents":[
]
}
}
}
This now has multiple problems:
- The city names are in the country language (not in English)
- The foursquare API for this search returns Shibuya for a city (as an example) which is a special ward, and not a city and Tokyo for the state. However, in Germany the city is the city, like Cologne and state is the state, like Northrhine-Westphalia
This leads to the problem, that I can't easily compare the cities to see if the POI is in the requested City. I could however check if the city or the state matches, but this could be different in every country, so I see that as a problem.
So, what is the best way to get only cities in a given city for specific categories independent of time, location etc. and filter out pois from cities that are not the requested city?