Leaflet + Mapzen Search geocoding plugin

A plugin that adds the ability to search (geocode) a Leaflet-powered map using Mapzen Search or your own hosted version of the Pelias Geocoder API.

Demo

See it in action!

Requirements

Requires the Leaflet mapping library. Supports Leaflet v0.7.3 (and higher) and v1.0.0. (Previous Leaflet versions may work, but are not actively tested or supported.)

Browser support is IE8+ (more details below).

To use the Mapzen Search service, you need a Mapzen API key. Get one from the Mapzen developers portal. It's free!

Basic usage

Step 1: In HTML, import the required Leaflet JavaScript and CSS files. Start quickly with hosted libraries on cdnjs!

Step 2: In JavaScript, initialize your Leaflet map.

// This is an example of Leaflet usage; you should modify this for your needs.
var map = L.map('map').setView([40.7259, -73.9805], 12);
L.tileLayer('https://{s}.tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png').addTo(map);

Step 3: In JavaScript, add your geocoder with your Mapzen API key.

L.control.geocoder('').addTo(map);

Step 4: Rejoice!

There is also a tutorial

It has much more detailed walkthrough instructions and is very friendly for beginners. No coding experience is necessary! Check it out here.

Want this as a module?

Experienced developers can install with npm:

npm install leaflet-geocoder-mapzen

And then import it in your module system. For instance, with Browserify:

// Require Leaflet first
var L = require('leaflet');

// Requiring the plugin extends Leaflet automatically
require('leaflet-geocoder-mapzen');

// You can also store a reference to the geocoder constructor in the require()
var MyGeocoderPlugin = require('leaflet-geocoder-mapzen');

// Now you can do step 2 and 3 from "Basic usage" instructions, above

This plugin implements the Universal Module Definition so you can also use it in AMD and CommonJS environments.

ES2015 (ECMAScript 6)

To import this plugin in ES2015 environments, the import syntax is supported:

import L from 'leaflet';
import 'leaflet-geocoder-mapzen';

// Alternatively
import MyGeocoderPlugin from 'leaflet-geocoder-mapzen';

Customizing the plugin

You can optionally specify additional settings to the plugin by passing in an object as a second argument to the geocoder() method, like so:

var options = {
  bounds: true,
  position: 'topright',
  expanded: true
};

L.control.geocoder('', options).addTo(map);

Here are a list all the settings and their default values.

Query behavior

Some options affect the Mapzen Search / Pelias query itself.

option	description	default value
url	String. Host endpoint for a Pelias-compatible search API.	'https://search.mapzen.com/v1'
bounds	Leaflet LatLngBounds object or Boolean. If true, search is bounded by the current map view. You may also provide a custom bounding box in form of a LatLngBounds object. Note: bounds is not supported by autocomplete.	false
focus	Leaflet LatLng object or Boolean. If true, search and autocomplete prioritizes results near the center of the current view. You may also provide a custom LatLng value (in any of the accepted Leaflet formats) to act as the center bias.	true
latlng	Deprecated. Please use focus instead.
layers	String or Array. Filters results by layers (documentation). If left blank, results will come from all available layers.	null
params	Object. An object of key-value pairs which will be serialized into query parameters that will be passed to the API. This allows custom queries that are not already supported by the convenience options listed above. For a full list of supported parameters, please read the Mapzen Search documentation. IMPORTANT: some parameters only work with the /search endpoint, and do not apply to /autocomplete requests! All supplied parameters are passed through; this library doesn't know which are valid parameters and which are not. In the event that other options conflict with parameters passed passed through params, the params option takes precedence.	null

Examples

// Searching nearby [50.5, 30.5]
L.control.geocoder('', {
  focus: [50.5, 30.5], // this can also written as {lat: 50.5, lon: 30.5} or L.latLng(50.5, 30.5)
  placeholder: 'Search nearby [50.5, 30.5]'
}).addTo(map);

// Taking just the center of the map (lat/lon) into account
L.control.geocoder('', {
  focus: true,
  placeholder: 'Search nearby'
}).addTo(map);

// Searching within a bounding box
var southWest = L.latLng(40.712, -74.227);
var northEast = L.latLng(40.774, -74.125);
var bounds = L.latLngBounds(southWest, northEast);

L.control.geocoder('', {
  bounds: bounds,
  placeholder: 'Search within ' + bounds.toBBoxString()
}).addTo(map);

// Taking just the bounding box of the map view into account
L.control.geocoder('', {
  bounds: true,
  placeholder: 'Search within the bounds'
}).addTo(map);

// Coarse Geocoder: search only admin layers
L.control.geocoder('', {
  layers: 'coarse',
  placeholder: 'Coarse geocoder'
}).addTo(map);

// Address Geocoder: search only (street) address layers
L.control.geocoder('', {
  layers: 'address',
  placeholder: 'Address geocoder'
}).addTo(map);

// POI Geocoder: search only points of interests
L.control.geocoder('', {
  layers: 'venue',
  placeholder: 'Venues geocoder'
}).addTo(map);

// Street level Geocoder: search only venue and street addresses
L.control.geocoder('', {
  layers: ['venue', 'address'],
  placeholder: 'Street geocoder'
}).addTo(map);

// Custom filtering and bounding parameters
// For valid parameters, see Mapzen Search documentation for
// search (https://mapzen.com/documentation/search/search/)
// and autocomplete (https://mapzen.com/documentation/search/autocomplete/)
// Note that some parameters use dot notation and so must be quoted
// in JavaScript otherwise it will result in a syntax error
L.control.geocoder('', {
  params: {
    sources: 'whosonfirst',
    'boundary.country': 'AUS'
  },
  placeholder: 'Results via Who’s on First in Australia'
}).addTo(map);

Interaction behavior

These options affect the plugin's appearance and interaction behavior.

option	description	default value
position	String. Corner in which to place the geocoder control. Values correspond to Leaflet control positions.	'topleft'
attribution	String. Attribution text that will be appended to Leaflet’s attribution control. Set to a blank string or null to disable adding the plugin’s default attribution.	'Geocoding by <a href="https://mapzen.com/projects/search/">Mapzen</a>'
textStrings	Object. An object of string values that replace text strings in the geocoder control, so you can provide your own custom messages or localization.	See “Custom text strings” section below.
placeholder	String. Placeholder text to display in the search input box. This is an alias for textStrings.INPUT_PLACEHOLDER. Set to a blank string or null to disable.	'Search'
title	Deprecated. Please use `textStrings.INPUT_TITLE_ATTRIBUTE instead.
panToPoint	Boolean. If true, highlighting a search result pans the map to that location.	true
pointIcon	Boolean or String. If true, an icon is used to indicate a point result, matching the "venue" or "address" layer types. If false, no icon is displayed. For custom icons, pass a string containing a path to the image.	true
polygonIcon	Boolean or String. If true, an icon is used to indicate a polygonal result, matching any non-"venue" or non-"address" layer type. If false, no icon is displayed. For custom icons, pass a string containing a path to the image.	true
markers	Leaflet Marker options object or Boolean. If true, search results drops Leaflet's default blue markers onto the map. You may customize this marker's appearance and behavior using Leaflet marker options.	true
overrideBbox	Boolean. Some search results will zoom to a bounding box if it is available, instead of dropping a point marker. If true, selecting a result will always drop a point marker regardless of whether bounding box data is present.	false
fullWidth	Integer or Boolean. If true, the input box will expand to take up the full width of the map container. If an integer breakpoint is provided, the full width applies only if the map container width is below this breakpoint.	650
expanded	Boolean. If true, the search input is always expanded. It does not collapse into a button-only state.	false
autocomplete	Boolean. If true, suggested results are fetched on each keystroke. If false, this is disabled and users must obtain results by pressing the Enter key after typing in their query.	true
place	Boolean. If true, selected results will make a request to the service /place endpoint. If false, this is disabled. The geocoder does not handle responses to /place, you will need to do handle it yourself in the results event listener (see below).	false

Examples

// Different position
L.control.geocoder('', {
  position: 'topright'
}).addTo(map);

// Customizing layer icons
L.control.geocoder('', {
  pointIcon: 'https://www.somewhereontheweb.com/download/img/point.png',
  polygonIcon: 'https://cloud.com/polygon-icon.svg'
}).addTo(map);

// Disabling layer icons
L.control.geocoder('', {
  pointIcon: false,
  polygonIcon: false
}).addTo(map);

// Disable zoom/pan to a point while browsing the results (up/down arrows)
L.control.geocoder('', {
  panToPoint: false
}).addTo(map);

// Set the geocoder to always be the full width of the map
// By default, the geocoder is only full width when the screen is less than 650 pixels wide
L.control.geocoder('', {
  fullWidth: true
}).addTo(map);

// Disable markers for search results
L.control.geocoder('', {
  markers: false
}).addTo(map);

// Force the geocoder to always be in the expanded state
L.control.geocoder('', {
  expanded: true
}).addTo(map);

// Changing attribution
// By default, adds "Geocoding by Mapzen" text with a link
// You can remove this if you like, or change the text.
L.control.geocoder('', {
  attribution: null
}).addTo(map);

Custom text strings

These are the text strings that are used by the geocoder control. You can override these strings by passing in a textStrings options object containing the names of the string(s) you want to customize. You can use this method to localize the controls for a different language, for instance.

UI text

string name	default value
INPUT_PLACEHOLDER	'Search'
INPUT_TITLE_ATTRIBUTE	'Search'
RESET_TITLE_ATTRIBUTE	'Reset'
NO_RESULTS	'No results were found.'

HTTP status code errors

Learn more about possible error messages in Mapzen Search documentation. ERROR_DEFAULT is a catch-all error that displays when a request returns an error with an unexpected HTTP status code (or none at all) — one example where this can happen is when a browser is prevented from making a request due to a security concern, such as the lack of CORS headers on the search endpoint.

string name	default value
ERROR_403	'A valid API key is needed for this search feature.'
ERROR_404	'The search service cannot be found. 😦'
ERROR_408	'The search service took too long to respond. Try again in a second.'
ERROR_429	'There were too many requests. Try again in a second.'
ERROR_500	'The search service is not working right now. Please try again later.'
ERROR_502	'Connection lost. Please try again later.'
ERROR_DEFAULT	'The search service is having problems 😦'

Examples

// Uses custom text strings to localise the geocoder control.
L.control.geocoder('', {
  textStrings: {
    INPUT_PLACEHOLDER: '도시, 지명 등을 검색해보세요.',
    INPUT_TITLE_ATTRIBUTE: '도시, 지명 등을 검색해보세요.',
    RESET_TITLE_ATTRIBUTE: '다시 검색하기',
    NO_RESULTS: '해당 결과가 없습니다.',
    ERROR_403: '해당 서비스를 사용하기 위해서는 API KEY가 필요합니다.',
    ERROR_404: '검색 서비스를 찾을 수 없습니다. :-(',
    ERROR_408: '검색에 예상보다 긴 시간이 소요되고 있습니다. 조금 있다가 다시 시도해보는 건 어떨까요?',
    ERROR_429: '지나치게 많은 리퀘스트가 발생했습니다. 조금 있다가 다시 시도해보는 건 어떨까요?',
    ERROR_500: '검색 서비스가 현재 작동하지 않고있습니다. 조금 있다가 다시 시도해보는 건 어떨까요?',
    ERROR_502: '네트워크 상태가 불안정합니다. 조금 있다가 다시 시도해보는 건 어떨까요?',
    ERROR_DEFAULT: '검색 서비스에 문제가 있는 것으로 보입니다. :-('
  }
}).addTo(map);

See this in action!

Advanced usage

Examples with running code can be found in the examples directory.

Alternate syntax

You can instantiate a geocoder with the new keyword. Notice that the class names are capitalized. This is what actually happens under the hood of L.control.geocoder(), so this syntax does not do anything different, but you may prefer it for clarity or stylistic reasons.

new L.Control.Geocoder('').addTo(map);

Scripting with the plugin

When instantiating a geocoder, you may assign it to a variable. This will allow you to use its methods later on.

var geocoder = L.control.geocoder('');

// or with `new` keyword
var geocoder = new L.Control.Geocoder('');

// later
geocoder.addTo(map);

The plugin extends Leaflet's Control class, so you may use any of those methods to modify plugin behavior in your script.

// examples
geocoder.setPosition('topright');
var element = geocoder.getContainer();
geocoder.removeFrom(map); // or geocoder.remove() in Leaflet v1

With alternate require() or import syntax

If you require() or import and set it to a variable, you can also use new with that variable.

var MyGeocoderPlugin = require('leaflet-geocoder-mapzen');

// Alternatively
import MyGeocoderPlugin from 'leaflet-geocoder-mapzen';

// Then
var geocoder = new MyGeocoderPlugin('');

Properties

You can retrieve the current version of the geocoder.

console.log(geocoder.version);

Methods

There are additional methods on the geocoder that you can use.

// Expand the geocoder.
// Fires the `expand` event.
geocoder.expand();

// Collapse the geocoder.
// This works even if the option `expanded` is set to true!
// Fires the `collapse` event.
geocoder.collapse();

// Focus on the geocoder input.
// This will also expand the geocoder if it's collapsed.
geocoder.focus();

// Removes focus from the geocoder input.
// This also clears results and collapses the geocoder (if enabled).
geocoder.blur();

// Clears inputs and results from the geocoder control.
// This does not affect collapse or expanded state, and does not remove focus.
// Fires the `reset` event.
geocoder.reset();

Events

The geocoder includes all of Leaflet's events methods and adds additional events that you can subscribe to, so that you can customize what happens when users interact with the geocoder. When you instantiate a new geocoder, assign it to variable, as above, and then you can use the event methods to listen for the events that it's firing. For example:

geocoder.on('select', function (e) {
  console.log('You’ve selected', e.feature.properties.label);
});

All of Leaflet's event methods are available, such as on, off, once, and so on. The exact syntax and how it behaves are inherited from the version of Leaflet you are plugging into, so there are slight differences between the 0.7.x version line and the 1.0.0 version line.

The following events are fired:

event	description
results	Fired when search results are obtained.
error	Fired if there was an error with a search request.
select	Fired when a result is actively selected from the results list (not just highlighted.)
highlight	Fired when a result is highlighted by the up/down arrow keys.
expand	Fired when the geocoder is expanded.
collapse	Fired when the geocoder is collapsed.
reset	Fired when the geocoder is reset ("x" button is clicked).
focus	Fired when the geocoder is focused on the input.
blur	Fired when the geocoder loses focus on the input.

Here is a demo of the events.

Getting data

Certain events will pass data as the first argument to the event listener's callback function.

on results or error

In addition to the base event object from Leaflet, the event object will contain these other useful properties:

property	description
endpoint	A string of the Mapzen API endpoint that was called.
requestType	A string, either autocomplete, search, or place, depending on the request made.
params	An object containing the parameters that have been passed to the Mapzen Search request.
results	The original response object returned from Mapzen Search, including all feature geometries and properties.

If there was an error with the request, the event object will contain the additional properties:

property	description
errorCode	The HTTP status code received. More information.
errorMessage	The error message string that the geocoder will display.

on select and highlight

property	description
originalEvent	The original event object (MouseEvent or KeyboardEvent) reported by the browser.
latlng	A Leaflet LatLng object representing the coordinates of the result.
feature	The GeoJSON feature object from Mapzen Search, including feature geometry and properties.

on focus and blur

property	description
originalEvent	The original FocusEvent event object reported by the browser.

Browser support

This plugin supports all Leaflet-supported browsers except for Internet Explorer 7. It makes a cross-domain request in Javascript to obtain search results, which is not supported in IE7 without JSONP. Mapzen Search does not support API requests in JSONP.

Using a Pelias-compatible endpoint

This project was renamed as of v1.3.0 to be more closely associated with Mapzen Search, the hosted geocoding service provided by Mapzen that requires an API key. You can still point the geocoder at a different service running Pelias, Mapzen's open-source geocoder, by changing the url option (see Query behavior, above) to the desired endpoint. If an API key is not required, the parameter may be omitted or be set to undefined or null.

Accessing other plugin internals

Properties and methods used internally by the geocoder are also available on the returned object. These are purposefully not private or obscured, but they are also not publicly documented right now, since functionality may fluctuate without notice. Depending on usage and demand we will lock down and document internal properties and methods for general use. Please let us know in the issues tracker if you have feedback.

Do you support TypeScript?

Not officially. There are community-supplied type definitions at DefinitelyTyped.

Projects using this plugin

• Map My Story
• Greenpoint-Williamsburg ToxiCity Map
• what3emojis
• NYC Community Boards
• Wantoid

Let us know if you have a project you'd like to share!