Points of Interest as a Service

When building a location based service, access to public geo data like points of interest (POI) can be cumbersome and expensive. There are several proprietary databases which have specialized on access to POI data, but with the ever growing collection of data by OpenStreetMap and the collaborative power and its mature ecosystem of professionals and volunteers OSM is now a leading data source in many areas.

OpenStreetMap now tracks over a million restaurants and bars, 310,000 hotels, nearly 150,000 view points, 140,000 hospitals and over three million shops worldwide. They are not only precisely geolocated, but often also cover additional data like opening hours, telephone numbers or wheelchair accessibility.

The data and a lot of the technology in the OSM ecosystem is open, but for those who want to build upon it and use its power without worrying about setup and hosting, the possibilities are often limited: raw OSM data needs several processing steps and scaling up to a full planet access can be prohibitively expensive.

For this purpose, today we are launching OORA, a cloud-native API service that allows you use OpenStreetMap data without having to worry, so you can focus on your application.

Technical Details

To get all nearby convenience shops, just get

https://api.skowron.eu/oora/v1/shop/convenience?
	center_lat=50.95137&
	center_lon=6.95697

which will return something like this:

[
	{
		"type": "Feature",
		"properties": {
			"name": "Maxi Markt",
			"shop": "convenience"
		},
		"geometry": {
			"type": "Point",
			"coordinates": [6.95652930, 50.94593490]
		}
	},
	{
		"type": "Feature",
		"properties": {
			"addr:city": "Köln",
			"addr:country": "DE",
			"addr:housenumber": "12-14",
			"addr:postcode": "50668",
			"addr:street": "Riehler Straße",
			"brand": "REWE",
			"contact:phone": "0221 9726040",
			"contact:website": "https://togo.rewe.de/",
			"name": "REWE to go",
			"opening_hours": "24/7",
			"shop": "convenience",
			"wheelchair": "yes"
		},
		"geometry": {
			"type": "Point",
			"coordinates": [6.96184250, 50.95249260]
		}
	}
]

The data is licensed under the ODbL, Copyright by OpenStreetMap contributors. See X-Copyright HTTP header.

Getting Started

You can sign-up for the technology preview by entering your email address here:

You will automatically receive an API key, which will allow you to use the service for free. The free evaluation will last until at least May 31, 2019. You will be automatically notified before the production-grade product launch.

Please provide the received API key inside the Authorization HTTP header.

If you want to perform more than 100,000 requests, please contact us. Please also let us know if you want to use the API in production.

There is no warranty for the free service. If you need professional support, a custom deployment or consulting, please contact us first: oora@skowron.eu