Locator lets our users find locations, and then find content against them.
It’s available through Mashery as “Locations API” under the
A location search will look something like this:
http://bbc.api.mashery.com/locator/locations?l=en&s=Cardiff&a=false&lf=International&cc=GB&pt=settlement%2C+country%2C+region&rs=10&redirect=10&format=XML&vv=1&buffer=1&api_key=[API_KEY]
That search will return places corresponding to the search string. The goal is to find, for example, which “Sutton” a user wants to know about.
Once we’ve found an id for that location, we can then return information about it using the details endpoint, for example the Local News region for “CF5″, which is a postcode district in Cardiff:
http://bbc.api.mashery.com/locator/locations/CF5/details/news?l=en&rs=10&format=XML&w=1&buffer=1&api_key=[API_KEY]
If you’ve any trouble making all of this work, please come and talk to the Location Services team. We’re strategically placed close to the coffee (we’re called “The Lat longs” until someone thinks of something better…).