How to get the continent given the coordinates (latitude and longitude) in Python?

Question

Is there a method that allows to get the continent where it is in place given its coordinates (without an API key)?

I'm using:

from geopy.geocoders import Nominatim
geolocator = Nominatim(user_agent='...')
location = geolocator.reverse('51.0456448, 3.7273618')
print(location.address)
print((location.latitude, location.longitude))
print(location.raw)

But it does not return the continent. Even giving a place name and using geolocator.geocode() doesn't work. Besides, even giving a name and using:

import urllib.error, urllib.request, urllib.parse
import json

target = 'http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/json?' 

local = 'Paris'
url = target + urllib.parse.urlencode({'address': local, 'key' : 42})

data = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read()
js = json.loads(data)
print(json.dumps(js, indent=4))

Doesn't work either.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 04 '22 at 10:00

A bit late, but for future reference and those who could need it, like me recently, here is one way to do it with Wikipedia and the use of Pandas, requests and geopy:

import pandas as pd
import requests
from geopy.geocoders import Nominatim

URLS = {
    "Africa": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Africa",
    "Asia": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Asia",
    "Europe": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Europe",
    "North America": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_North_America",
    "Ocenia": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_Oceania",
    "South America": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_South_America",
}

def get_continents_and_countries() -> dict[str, str]:
    """Helper function to get countries and corresponding continents.

    Returns:
        Dictionary where keys are countries and values are continents.

    """
    df_ = pd.concat(
        [
            pd.DataFrame(
                pd.read_html(
                    requests.get(url).text.replace("<br />", ";"),
                    match="Flag",
                )[0]
                .pipe(
                    lambda df_: df_.rename(
                        columns={col: i for i, col in enumerate(df_.columns)}
                    )
                )[2]
                .str.split(";;")
                .apply(lambda x: x[0])
            )
            .assign(continent=continent)
            .rename(columns={2: "country"})
            for continent, url in URLS.items()
        ]
    ).reset_index(drop=True)
    df_["country"] = (
        df_["country"]
        .str.replace("*", "", regex=False)
        .str.split("[")
        .apply(lambda x: x[0])
    ).str.replace("\xa0", "")
    return dict(df_.to_dict(orient="split")["data"])

def get_location_of(coo: str, data: dict[str, str]) -> tuple[str, str, str]:
    """Function to get the country of given coordinates.

    Args:
        coo: coordinates as string ("lat, lon").
        data: input dictionary of countries and continents.

    Returns:
        Tuple of coordinates, country and continent (or Unknown if country not found).

    """
    geolocator = Nominatim(user_agent="stackoverflow", timeout=25)
    country: str = (
        geolocator.reverse(coo, language="en-US").raw["display_name"].split(", ")[-1]
    )
    return (coo, country, data.get(country, "Unknown"))

Finally:

continents_and_countries = get_continents_and_countries()

print(get_location_of("51.0456448, 3.7273618", continents_and_countries))

# Output
('51.0456448, 3.7273618', 'Belgium', 'Europe')

How to get the continent given the coordinates (latitude and longitude) in Python?

1 Answers1