Goplaces

Goplaces is a community skill for Google Places API access, covering text-based place search, detailed place information retrieval, place ID resolution, review fetching, and structured JSON output for location-based applications.

What Is This?

Overview

Goplaces provides a command-line interface to the Google Places API for location search and information retrieval. It covers text search that finds places using natural language queries like restaurants near me or coffee shops in Seattle, place details that retrieve comprehensive information including address, phone number, hours, website, and ratings for a specific location, place ID resolution that converts addresses and names into stable place identifiers, review fetching that gets user ratings, comments, and timestamps for places, and structured output that formats results as human-readable text or JSON for programmatic processing. The skill helps developers integrate location data into applications and workflows without writing custom API client code.

Who Should Use This

This skill serves location-based application developers integrating place search, AI agents providing local recommendations and directions, and travel planning tools building itinerary systems. It is also useful for data engineers who need to enrich datasets with verified location attributes such as business hours, coordinates, or contact details.

Why Use It?

Problems It Solves

Integrating Google Places API requires complex OAuth setup, HTTP request formatting, and pagination handling. Parsing JSON responses from the Places API involves navigating nested structures and handling missing optional fields. Building location search into command-line tools or AI agents requires a simple interface layer over the raw API. Maintaining stable place references across queries needs place ID management and caching logic. Goplaces abstracts these concerns into a consistent CLI interface, reducing integration time significantly.

Core Highlights

Search engine finds places using natural language queries with geolocation support. Details fetcher retrieves comprehensive place information including contact and hours. Resolver converts addresses to stable place IDs for reference consistency. Review reader gets user ratings and comments with timestamps.

How to Use It?

Basic Usage

goplaces search \
  "pizza in New York"

goplaces details \
  <place-id>

goplaces resolve \
  "1600 Amphitheatre \
  Parkway, Mountain View"

goplaces reviews \
  <place-id> \
  --limit 5

Real-World Examples

goplaces search \
  "coffee near me" \
  --format json \
  > results.json

goplaces details \
  ChIJN1t_tDeuEmsR \
  --format json | \
  jq '.formatted_address'

goplaces search \
  "restaurants" \
  --lat 37.7749 \
  --lng -122.4194 \
  --radius 1000

cat addresses.txt | \
  xargs -I {} \
  goplaces resolve "{}"

Advanced Tips

Use JSON output format to pipe results into jq or other processing tools for filtering and transformation. For example, extracting only open hours or rating scores from a details response becomes straightforward with a single jq filter expression. Combine search with radius parameters to find places within a specific distance from coordinates. Cache place IDs locally to reduce API calls when querying the same locations repeatedly. Storing resolved IDs in a local key-value store or simple flat file can meaningfully lower per-request costs over time.

When to Use It?

Use Cases

Build a restaurant recommendation system that searches for dining options based on cuisine type and location preferences. Create travel itinerary tools that fetch place details including hours and contact information for attractions. Integrate location search into AI agents that answer questions about nearby services and businesses.

Related Topics

Google Places API, location-based services, geocoding, point of interest search, map integration, and local business data.

Important Notes

Requirements

A Google Cloud project with Places API enabled and billing configured for API usage. API key stored in environment variables for authenticating goplaces CLI requests. The goplaces CLI tool installed and available in your system PATH for command execution.

Usage Recommendations

Do: use place IDs rather than names or addresses for stable references since places can change names but IDs remain constant. Enable billing on your Google Cloud project to avoid API quota errors. Cache frequently accessed place data to reduce API costs and improve response times.

Don't: expose API keys in command-line arguments or logs since they can be used to incur charges on your account. Make unbounded radius searches without location constraints since this increases costs. Assume all places have complete data since some fields like phone or website may be missing.

Limitations

Google Places API has usage quotas and per-request pricing that can accumulate costs with high-volume queries. Place data accuracy depends on community contributions and may be outdated for some locations. Some place types and regions have less comprehensive coverage with missing hours, photos, or reviews. Applications requiring real-time accuracy for critical workflows should implement a fallback verification step when data completeness is essential.