MapZen Search (aka Pelias) is amazing. We're using it to auto-name routes on gaiagps.com, and we're rolling out new search features and auto-naming to the app too.<p>MapZen makes a lot of great stuff actually. We also use the Mapzen Valhalla routing engine (<a href="https://github.com/valhalla" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/valhalla</a>) to do trail routing: <a href="http://blog.gaiagps.com/plot-a-precise-trail-with-the-gaia-gps-trail-finder/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.gaiagps.com/plot-a-precise-trail-with-the-gaia-g...</a>.<p>OpenStreetMap.org recently added Valhalla too - interesting to see competition between MapBox/OSRM and MapZen/Valhalla. The best mapping tech is being developed openly now, even competing open projects - that's a fount of innovation.
Worth mentioning that this is built on Pelias[0] which is an exceptional piece of software.<p>[0] - <a href="https://github.com/pelias/pelias" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pelias/pelias</a>
This looks really good! We've been looking for something to run ourselves that can replace Google.<p>However, I found a few flaws after a couple of minutes of testing.<p>1. Neither search nor autocomplete appears to support filtering by fields other than country? We have an app that needs to filter autocompletions by state. A focus point might be sufficient if the autocompleter aggressively sorts results based on distance, but I have yet to meet one that does this (or allows a tuning of the distance function). A rectangular bounding box filter doesn't cut it. I guess I'll have to check out the code and see if this can be added/improved.<p>2. The API only returns points, with no boundary information, for street addresses. We have an app that uses geocoding to match street addresses to points. But if your address is a bit imprecise and matches an <i>entire stretch of highway</i> (it happens a lot!), that's obviously not a valid match — something like "Highway 66" is just wrong. Google will wisely return a bounds object that you can compute the area for and determine if it's small enough that it's likely a precise enough location (we use 10m2 as the maximum). Unlike Google, Mapzen doesn't even tell you that your match is a "route" — everything is an individual street address. Not sure how trivial this would be to implement, as boundaries would need support from datasets; OSM has the required data, OpenAddresses might not.<p>3. Street address matching seems a bit patchy. I tried my Brooklyn street address, and it didn't find it. The building was constructed last year, though, so maybe it's old data. Can someone from Mapzen comment?
I've signed up for a api key, but I can't work out how to use it. I can't find any documentation.<p>I've tried using the curl example provided in <a href="https://github.com/pelias/pelias" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/pelias/pelias</a> and appending api_key=$apikey to it but I just get an error back saying that this is not a valid key.<p>Has anyone found any documentation for how to use this API?