Subscribe
Sign in
Algolia
p/algoliaOpen source platform for building search
Start new thread
Nicolas Dessaigne

Algolia Places - Intelligent address autocomplete for any <input>

by•

Algolia Places provides a fast, distributed and easy way to use address search autocomplete JavaScript library on your website. It has been designed to improve the user experience of your HTML forms.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Nicolas Dessaigne
Hunter
Hey hunters! As you may know, we love to experiment with our API and build new community services. We're super excited today to introduce Algolia Places, making it easy for developers to turn any HTML ‹input› into an autocomplete! We were able to build it thanks to the awesomeness of OpenStreetMap and Geonames. Compared to Google Places, it is highly customizable and can be enriched with additional data sources. Check out the blog post (https://blog.algolia.com/introdu...) or directly try it for yourself!
Evan Lodge
@dessaigne Can you elaborate on differences and use cases compared to google places?
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@evanlodge @dessaigne Our current focus is all about UX: we want Algolia Places to be easily extended and customizable to be deeply integrated in your apps. For instance. you can mix your own data & Places' suggestions in a single dropdown menu: https://community.algolia.com/pl... You can also use it to auto-fill your boring forms: https://community.algolia.com/pl... The underlying data is not yet at the level of what Google provides, but we're leveraging the progress that OpenStreetMap & GeoNames are making every day!
~~
@evanlodge the picture might be bigger… let's just wait the moment when it'd be asked to algolia to elaborate on use cases compared to firebase (or likes)
Mike Coutermarsh
@dessaigne Awesome - what's the pricing for this? Or is it free?
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@mscccc @dessaigne It's free up to 1,000 request per ip or HTTP referer; and we're still working on what could be a fair pricing for higher usage
guillaume cabane
This is amazing. I remember building an ad-hoc service in 2011 by patching multiple libraries and APIs, and it took us weeks to get it right. This is so useful to reduce friction in shopping carts or signup forms!
Eduardo Soubihe
This is great! Algolia Community is a huge example of the amount of value a startup can create on top of their product.
Ethan Pierse
Fantastic. Great job Team Algolia :)
Harry Stebbings
Incredible work as always by the team @algolia @dessaigne love it!
Chris Colleran
It looks really helpful, unfortunately the addresses near me did not work.
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@chris_colleran We rely on the OpenStreetMap & GeoNames data which may have a few missing places. Would be awesome if you could submit the "irrelevant/missing result" form here Chris: https://community.algolia.com/pl... much appreciated :)
VickyH @eeus
@sylvainutard @chris_colleran Is there a way for the user, who say did not have an address in the dropdown to override the autotext?
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@eeus You can integrate your own custom suggestions in a single dropdown menu, this is definitely the way to go. Check out our autocomplete.js integration: https://community.algolia.com/pl...
Michael Frye
Very cool. I'll have to remember this next time I need that functionality.
William Wung
Love this!
Patrick Monaghan
Is there pricing on this? Always found Google autocomplete a little too pricey!
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@paddym50 Still to be defined, for now it's 1,000 req / ip (or HTTP referer) per day
Samir Doshi
saving this for sure --- need this for a project right now ... awesome product.
Dainis Kanopa
Like it!
Amol Bhalerao
Looking cool. Excited to try it in current project.
Raul Rocawabe
yepa!
Otto Offringa
@sylvainutard In zip codes for The Netherlands only 4 numbers are showed, the 2 letters that come afterwards are missing. This should be the format: 1234XY. Rest looks fine and accurate, small places as well. Lightning fast. 👍
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@otto_offringa Thanks for the feedback; I'll make sure we work on improving that!
Alexander Obenauer
This looks great! Any way to get the timezone of the location that's returned?
Chuck Cruz
It's still not to accurate in Mexico. But it's a great idea! :)
Holger Sindbaek
How can I use your address suggestions in my iOS app?
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@holgersindbaek We've been promoting the JavaScript a lot, but the other API clients are coming. In the meantime, here is the documentation of the underlying REST API: https://community.algolia.com/pl...
Holger Sindbaek
@sylvainutard Cool. Can I make a request to the places indice then with the "ASAPIClient"? How would such a query look?
Sylvain Utard
Maker
@holgersindbaek No you cannot as-is; you'll need to use that new REST API endpoint. It's actually wrapping a few Algolia Search queries & custom logic for the Places use-case. We'll soon release a blog post explaining how we built that, diving into technical details of the implementation.
Hamed Al-Khabaz
This is a good start, but nowhere close to where I want it to be so it could fit my use case at Stay22.com (where we work mostly with Venues and POIs, and our autocomplete is already mixed with Algoia and Google Places using Bloohound from bootstrap)
Amit Bhatia
I like the idea but it's going to need a lot of work before it's really usable for most serious applicataions. Simple example: type "USA" (it shows small towns in Eastern Europe) or type a zipcode, or type "England" (it defaults to London, and then England, Arkansas - it never shows England as an area). This isn't Aloglia's issue but the limitations of openstreetmap data. It's messy. While this works for most inputs - the tag-line "turn any input" would be misleading, at least right now until they have enough user data to improve it. I do like the idea and am glad it's been worked on.
Andrew Richard
Cool.. anything with Algolia, autocomplete and input is definitely time saving