Why can't Google Sheets find reverseGeocode method from Maps API? - google-apps-script

Question

I'm using a Google Sheets function to reverse geocode a list lat/long coordinates. It looks like this:
function getAdd(lat, lng) {
if (lat == "") {
return "You have to provide latitudinal coordinates to the place"
} if (lng == ""){
return "You have to provide longitudinal coordinates to the place"
}
var response = Maps.newGeocoder().reverseGeocode(lat, lng);
for (var i = 0; i < response.results.length; i++) {
var result = response.results[i];
Utilities.sleep(1000);
return result.formatted_address;
}
};
Question 1: Why is Google Sheets giving me the following error: "Cannot find method reverseGeocode(object,(class))"?
Question 2: Once I fix that, how can fetch country names from the result array instead of the complete address from the results?

Answer 1

You're trying to return a result for each result in the response object. Instead you have to choose one:
function getAdd(lat, lng) {
if (lat == "") {
return "You have to provide latitudinal coordinates to the place"
} if (lng == ""){
return "You have to provide longitudinal coordinates to the place"
}
var response = Maps.newGeocoder().reverseGeocode(lat, lng);
return response.results[0].formatted_address;
};
If you're looking for just the country, the format of the result object is here:
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/#ReverseGeocoding
In that case, you should iterate through the results[0] object and test to see if the types includes "Country". If it does, select the results[0].address_components[i].short_name where i is your iterator. Or use long_name instead.

Answer 2

Ok, figured it out. Here's how I eventually got country from lat/long:
function getAdd(lat, lng) {
if (lat == "") {
return "Insert latitude."
}
if (lng == ""){
return "Insert longitude."
}
var response = Maps.newGeocoder().reverseGeocode(lat,lng);
Utilities.sleep(1000); //in order not to exeed api calls per second
for (var i in response.results) {
var result = response.results[i];
}
for (var j in result.address_components) {
for (var k in result.address_components[j].types) {
if (result.address_components[j].types[k] == "country") {
return result.address_components[j].long_name;
}
}
}
};

Answer 3

Thank you for posting this it just helped me a lot with what I was trying to do. Just a quick note that your first loop simply returns the last record and not all data is in the last record but the country seems to always be there. If anyone (like me) is looking for locality names you can simply choose the first record and more data is available to you.
I just changed:
for (var i in response.results) {
var result = response.results[i];
}
to:
var result = response.results[0];
Full Code returns the locality and country:
function getAdd(lat, lng) {
var response = Maps.newGeocoder().reverseGeocode(lat,lng);
var country="";
var place="";
Utilities.sleep(1000); //in order not to exeed api calls per second
var result = response.results[0];
for (var j in result.address_components) {
for (var k in result.address_components[j].types) {
if (result.address_components[j].types[k] == "country") {
country = result.address_components[j].long_name;
}
if(result.address_components[j].types[k] == "locality") {
place = result.address_components[j].long_name;
}
}
}
return [place, country];
};