Getting Started🔗

The Nominatim search frontend is implemented as a Python library and can as such directly be used in Python scripts and applications. You don't need to set up a web frontend and access it through HTTP calls. The library gives direct access to the Nominatim database through similar search functions as offered by the web API. In addition, it will give you a more complete and detailed view on the search objects stored in the database.

Warning

The Nominatim library is used for accessing a local Nominatim database. It is not meant to be used against web services of Nominatim like the one on https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org. If you need a Python library to access these web services, have a look at GeoPy. Don't forget to consult the usage policy of the service you want to use before accessing such a web service.

Installation🔗

To use the Nominatim library, you need access to a local Nominatim database. Follow the installation and import instructions to set up your database.

The Nominatim frontend library is contained in the Python package nominatim-api. You can install the latest released version directly from pip:

pip install nominatim-api

To install the package from the source tree directly, run:

pip install packaging/nominatim-api

Usually you would want to run this in a virtual environment.

A simple search example🔗

To query the Nominatim database you need to first set up a connection. This is done by creating an Nominatim API object. This object exposes all the search functions of Nominatim that are also known from its web API.

This code snippet implements a simple search for the town of 'Brugge':

Example

NominatimAPIAsyncNominatimAPI

import asyncio

import nominatim_api as napi

async def search(query):
    async with napi.NominatimAPIAsync() as api:
        return await api.search(query)

results = asyncio.run(search('Brugge'))
if not results:
    print('Cannot find Brugge')
else:
    print(f'Found a place at {results[0].centroid.x},{results[0].centroid.y}')

import nominatim_api as napi

with napi.NominatimAPI() as api:
    results = api.search('Brugge')

if not results:
    print('Cannot find Brugge')
else:
    print(f'Found a place at {results[0].centroid.x},{results[0].centroid.y}')

The Nominatim library is designed around asyncio. NominatimAPIAsync provides you with an interface of coroutines. If you have many requests to make, coroutines can speed up your applications significantly.

For smaller scripts there is also a synchronous wrapper around the API. By using NominatimAPI, you get exactly the same interface using classic functions.

The examples in this chapter will always show-case both implementations. The documentation itself will usually refer only to 'Nominatim API class' when both flavours are meant. If a functionality is available only for the synchronous or asynchronous version, this will be explicitly mentioned.

Defining which database to use🔗

The Configuration section explains how Nominatim is configured using the dotenv library. The same configuration mechanism is used with the Nominatim API library. You should therefore be sure you are familiar with the section.

There are three different ways, how configuration options can be set for a 'Nominatim API class'. When you have set up your Nominatim database, you have normally created a project directory which stores the various configuration and customization files that Nominatim needs. You may pass the location of the project directory to your 'Nominatim API class' constructor and it will read the .env file in the directory and set the configuration accordingly. Here is the simple search example, using the configuration from a pre-defined project directory in /srv/nominatim-project:

Example

NominatimAPIAsyncNominatimAPI

import asyncio

import nominatim_api as napi

async def search(query):
    async with napi.NominatimAPIAsync('/srv/nominatim-project') as api:
        return await api.search(query)

results = asyncio.run(search('Brugge'))
if not results:
    print('Cannot find Brugge')
else:
    print(f'Found a place at {results[0].centroid.x},{results[0].centroid.y}')

import nominatim_api as napi

with napi.NominatimAPI('/srv/nominatim-project') as api:
    results = api.search('Brugge')

if not results:
    print('Cannot find Brugge')
else:
    print(f'Found a place at {results[0].centroid.x},{results[0].centroid.y}')

You may also configure Nominatim by setting environment variables. Normally Nominatim will check the operating system environment. Lets say you want to look up 'Brugge' in the special database named 'belgium' instead of the standard 'nominatim' database. You can run the example script above like this:

NOMINATIM_DATABASE_DSN=pgsql:dbname=belgium python3 example.py

The third option to configure the library is to hand in the configuration parameters into the 'Nominatim API class'. Changing the database would look like this:

Example

NominatimAPIAsyncNominatimAPI

import asyncio
import nominatim_api as napi

config_params = {
    'NOMINATIM_DATABASE_DSN': 'pgsql:dbname=belgium'
}

async def search(query):
    async with napi.NominatimAPIAsync(environ=config_params) as api:
        return await api.search(query)

results = asyncio.run(search('Brugge'))

import nominatim_api as napi

config_params = {
    'NOMINATIM_DATABASE_DSN': 'pgsql:dbname=belgium'
}

with napi.NominatimAPI(environ=config_params) as api:
    results = api.search('Brugge')

When the environ parameter is given, then only configuration variables from this dictionary will be used. The operating system's environment variables will be ignored.

Presenting results to humans🔗

All search functions return full result objects from the database. Such a result object contains lots of details: names, address information, OSM tags etc. This gives you lots of flexibility what to do with the results.

One of the most common things to get is some kind of human-readable label that describes the result in a compact form. Usually this would be the name of the object and some parts of the address to explain where in the world it is. To create such a label, you need two things:

the address details of the place
all names for the label adapted to the language you wish to use for display

Again searching for 'Brugge', this time with a nicely formatted result:

Example

NominatimAPIAsyncNominatimAPI

import asyncio

import nominatim_api as napi

async def search(query):
    async with napi.NominatimAPIAsync() as api:
        return await api.search(query, address_details=True)

results = asyncio.run(search('Brugge'))

locale = napi.Locales(['fr', 'en'])
for i, result in enumerate(results):
    address_parts = result.address_rows.localize(locale)
    print(f"{i + 1}. {', '.join(address_parts)}")

import nominatim_api as napi

with napi.NominatimAPI() as api:
    results = api.search('Brugge', address_details=True)

locale = napi.Locales(['fr', 'en'])
for i, result in enumerate(results):
    address_parts = result.address_rows.localize(locale)
    print(f"{i + 1}. {', '.join(address_parts)}")

To request information about the address of a result, add the optional parameter 'address_details' to your search:

>>> results = api.search('Brugge', address_details=True)

An additional field address_rows will set in results that are returned. It contains a list of all places that make up the address of the place. For simplicity, this includes name and house number of the place itself. With the names in this list it is possible to create a human-readable description of the result. To do that, you first need to decide in which language the results should be presented. As with the names in the result itself, the places in address_rows contain all possible name translation for each row.

The library has a helper class Locale which helps extracting a name of a place in the preferred language. It takes a single parameter with a list of language codes in the order of preference. So

locale = napi.Locale(['fr', 'en'])

creates a helper class that returns the name preferably in French. If that is not possible, it tries English and eventually falls back to the default name or ref.

The Locale object can be applied to a name dictionary to return the best-matching name out of it:

>>> print(locale.display_name(results[0].names))
'Brugges'

The address_row field has a helper function to apply the function to all its members and save the result in the local_name field. It also returns all the localized names as a convenient simple list. This list can be used to create a human-readable output:

>>> address_parts = results[0].address_rows.localize(locale)
>>> print(', '.join(address_parts))
Bruges, Flandre-Occidentale, Flandre, Belgique

This is a fairly simple way to create a human-readable description. The place information in address_rows contains further information about each place. For example, which OSM admin_level was used, what category the place belongs to or what rank Nominatim has assigned. Use this to adapt the output to local address formats.

For more information on address rows, see detailed address description.