Geocode3- no longer available?

[Pierpaolo Perna]

Hello,

I am trying to install geocode3 (I understand that geocode has been replaced with its up-to-date version).

However, I get the following error message after typing "findit geocode3":

"file http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/g/geocode3.pkg not found
could not load geocode3.pkg from http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/g/
r(601)";

It seems like geocode3 is no longer available. Is there an alternative way of installing it? Am I missing something?

Thank you,

Pierpaolo

[Nick Cox]

There is no geocode3 package currently downloadable on SSC. I'd ask the program authors why.

[Pierpaolo Perna]

Thanks.
It would be very useful to know is someone could share the .ado file and/or if the command is still working.

Pierpaolo

[wbuchanan]

What locations are you attempting to geocode? If all your addresses are in the U.S., you can build out an instance of the PostGIS Tiger Geocoder without too much pain. On my MacBook Pro (i7 quad core 2.9Ghz 16GB RAM) it takes about five minutes to query 1,000 addresses in California. In smaller states, the processing is much faster although I've not done any formal benchmarks. There are also people who've done the work to build out similar capabilities with the open street map database as well. If you have a more powerful box, I'd assume you could very easily get much better performance.

[Rohan Thavarajah]

Hi Pierpaolo,

I've encountered a similar issue. Does anyone have or know of archived versions of the package that are still functioning? It would be a great help please!

Rohan

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Rohan Thavarajah
I have a backup copy from 04.04.2014, but until we know what's going on I don't think it is a good idea to spread it around. You need to contact the author Mr. Stefan Bernhard.
You will find his address on this page: http://www.stata.com/statalist/archi.../msg00630.html
Best, Sergiy Radyakin

[wbuchanan]

For anyone needing to use the Google geocoding API, I just added a program to the jsonio package for handling the API call and parsing the data (with options that allow you to return different parts of the payload of your choosing).

[cammcdermaid]

Willilam, the current jsonio package looks to be circa 2015. Did you pull back the version that added ggeocode?

[wbuchanan]

cammcdermaid

. net desc jsonio, from("http://wbuchanan.github.io/StataJSON/")

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
package jsonio from http://wbuchanan.github.io/StataJSON
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TITLE
      'JSONIO': A Stata plugin for IO operations involving JSON

DESCRIPTION/AUTHOR(S)
      
      A program to serialize Stata datasets (in memory) to JSON.
      Options are available to return the JSON object to the
      console or to write the JSON object to disk.  The plugin
      requires JRE 1.8 or later.
      
      KW: JSON
      KW: IO
      KW: export
      KW: convert
      KW: data transfer
      
      Requires: Stata version 14.1
      
      Distribution-Date: 20160212
      
      Author: Billy Buchanan
              Data Scientist
              Office of Research, Evaluation, and Assessment
              Minneapolis Public Schools
      
      
      Support: email William [dot] Buchanan @t mpls [dot] k12 [dot] mn [dot] us
      

INSTALLATION FILES                               (type net install jsonio)
      ggeocode.ado
      ggeocode.sthlp
      jsonio.ado
      jsonio.sthlp
      jsonio.jar
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The -ggeocode- command is available from the development version of the package (see above). I've not had a ton of time to try working out/testing better ways to consistently flatten JSON into a two dimensional array just yet and haven't submitted the changes to the SSC because of that. But if you install it from the location above you should be good to go.

[David Tranv]

Hi Statalist,

I try to use -ggeocode- as suggested in help file, but there is error message.
Here is my sample:

 clear
input float id str28 city str4 state str12 zip
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087"
  end

And that is my code

ggeocode city state zip

That is the error

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/paces/Stata/Google/Google
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.paces.Stata.Google.Goo
> gle
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java: 372)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java: 361)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.j ava:360)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:4 24)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launche r.java:308)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:3 57)
r(5100);

My stata is v14 MP. My laptop is window 7 pro 64 bits, 8GB ram.

Could you fix what is my error?

Many thanks

[wbuchanan]

David Tranv, there are a few different issues potentially at play. The first is that geocoding is used for point locations, not polygons. So, you would need a street address along with the city/state to get reasonable results. I haven't checked the Google API in a while but it might just return the centroids for these types of cases. The second thing that might help is restarting your Stata. The error that you're getting could indicate that you installed the package after the JVM had already been spun up, in which case the Java binary wouldn't be found on the class path. If you install/reinstall right at the start of your session that should help some.

[David Tranv]

Wbuchanan, thanks for your reply.
Do you know any package that could give me the location without street address. My data do not contain street.
Many thanks

[wbuchanan]

David Tranv What location are you searching for? There are an infinite number of points within say Paris, France, so how would the point that you are searching for be selected and how could it be verified? The Google geocoding API will return a latitude and longitude which I assume is the centroid, but I've not looked deep enough into their API documentation to be sure about that. I think the issue you ran into was more an issue of needing to restart your Stata or install the development version of the program:

net inst jsonio, from("http://wbuchanan.github.io/StataJSON/") replace force

When I use the version that would be installed from that location this is what the results look like:

. clear

. input float id str28 city str4 state str12 zip

            id                          city      state           zip
  1. 1 "LITTLE RIVER" "SC" "29566" 
  2. 2 "SPARTA" "GA" "31087" 
  3. end

. ggeocode city state zip, ret(bbox location geotype address location)

. li

     +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  1. | id |         city | state |   zip |           formatted_address |    geo_type | bbox_ma~t | bbox_max~n | bbox_mi~t | bbox_min~n |
     |  1 | LITTLE RIVER |    SC | 29566 | Little River, SC 29566, USA | approximate | 33.906248 | -78.576886 | 33.851908 | -78.687295 |
     |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
     |                                 lat                           |                                  lon                            |
     |                           33.873228                           |                            -78.61418                            |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

     +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  2. | id |         city | state |   zip |           formatted_address |    geo_type | bbox_ma~t | bbox_max~n | bbox_mi~t | bbox_min~n |
     |  2 |       SPARTA |    GA | 31087 |       Sparta, GA 31087, USA | approximate | 33.286101 | -82.953667 | 33.267893 | -82.990281 |
     |---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
     |                                 lat                           |                                  lon                            |
     |                           33.275701                           |                           -82.976259                            |
     +---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+