Add local places script to retrieve nearby information

Author: iq-dot

README.md

@@ -30,3 +30,7 @@ Unfortunately both data sets are not under the Open Government Licence and needs
 [Commercial and Corporate Owners](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hm-land-registry-commercial-and-corporate-ownership-data)
 
 [Overseas Companies Ownership Data](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/overseas-companies-ownership-data-technical-specification/overseas-companies-ownership-data-technical-specification)
+
+### [Local Places Data](local-places)
+
+This an integration with Google Places API to retrieve local information for given lat/long within a radius. This is a starting point on creating a more detailed area map of a location and best used with Postcode geo lat/long.

local-places/README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+# Local Places Data
+
+This is Google Places integration for finding local information for any given location.
+The data is retrieved using a script and the output is in a JSON format, suitable for saving to a file.
+
+## What tools are available
+1. The `get-local-places` is a command line tool that retrieves local places data for a given point.
+
+## Notes on Schema
+No schema is provided here as you may not necessarily want to store them permanently and retrieve these details on a real time basis only. If you do want to store them, then it is recommended to use a short to long term caching strategy so your data is not too stale.
+
+## How to run the downloader
+
+The `get-local-places.py` script requires a Google API key which you can get from their account dashboard.
+Once you have the key you can either provide it as a parameter to the script or set is an environment variable called `GOOGLE_API_KEY`.
+
+The general format for running this script is:
+
+```get-local-places.py <lat> <long> [-p PAGE] [-k KEY]```
+
+The provided key will override the environment variable and the page parameter is for retrieving the next page
+of results for the same query. If there are multiple pages the output will provide a next page token which you can pass in here.

local-places/get-local-places.py

@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+
+import argparse
+import json
+import os
+from urllib import request
+
+API_URL = 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/textsearch/json?key={key}&query={query}&location={loc}&radius={radius}'
+
+parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+parser.add_argument('lat', help='Latitude')
+parser.add_argument('lng', help='Longitude')
+parser.add_argument('-k', '--key', help='The Google API key, will override any GOOGLE_API_KEY env variable')
+parser.add_argument('-p', '--page', help='The next page token if available')
+args = parser.parse_args()
+
+api_key =  args.key or os.environ['GOOGLE_API_KEY']
+
+req_url = API_URL.format(key=api_key, query='shop', loc=args.lat+','+args.lng, radius='500')
+
+if (args.page):
+    req_url = req_url+'&pagetoken='+args.page
+
+with request.urlopen(req_url) as resp:
+    json_resp = json.loads(resp.read())
+    print(json.dumps(json_resp, indent=2))