In edwindj/nllocation: Geocoding for the Netherlands

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE)

Aim

Create an R interface to the PDOK Locatieserver API.
Locatieserver is a (reverse) geocoding service for The Netherlands.
Locatieserver is part of the Dutch National Spatial Data Infrastructure and hosted by PDOK.

\includegraphics[width = 80mm]{img/pdok.png}

Team

Documentation

How do we name the package?

Suggestions:

pdokr
nllocation
dutchgeocoder
\color{green}nlgeocoder

Considerations:

The name should describe the functionality well
Users should see immediately that the package is only for geocoding addresses in the Netherlands
Maybe we want to create an interface to other PDOK functionality later, but for now we choose to create a compact package that only uses Locatieserver
Prefix 'nl' is better than 'dutch', because the package will only work for The Netherlands, not for other countries where Dutch is spoken.
The package should preferrably end with an 'r' ;-)

What license?

"As open as possible"

Naming conventions

Prefix functions with nl_

Ideas

Use a dataframe with descriptions of locations as an input
Return the response as an sf object
Use the score attribute as a thresshold value to determine if a search result should be returned to the user. If the score is too low, it is may not be a good fit.
Mimic the geocode function in the ggmap package. For example, add a parameter output (latlon, latlona, more, all)
Add a parameter to choose between returning the location in WGS84 or RD_New.
Add a parameter to limit the number of rows returned with default value 1.
Add a parameter to add the API key to the request. Apparantly not obligatory, but nice to have for PDOK to monitor API usage.
Add parameter type with predefined values to choose from (e.g. adres).
Add some time ('sleep') between subsequent requests.
Add parameter to choose between returning datasets in a new dataframe or adding them to the input dataframe.
adressSelectInput box for Shiny

Findings

You can only do one-by-one requests to the Locatieserver, no bulk requests.
What are the terms of use for Locatieserver? There are none. See this answer in the PDOK forum.