Geocoding with SpatiaLite

[rinig...@gmail.com]

Dear List members,

I have been looking around for offline solutions for geocoding that could work on mobile. Unfortunately, I couldn't find much and I wonder why there have been no geocoders written using SQLite + SpatiaLite. There was a short mail exchange on the topic in 2013 in this list, but it didn't lead too far.

When compared to 2013 there has been major change in the landscape via introduction of libpostal. Using libpostal, I could normalize and split the free text query into hierarchy that should allow relatively simple search implementation in SQL databases. I have tested libpostal a bit on mobile and it looks that its possible to reduce its memory and storage footprint by covering by countries and not the whole planet. Its just that now I am looking for a geocoding backend where I could plug-in libpostal. Since its easy to check and debug SQL-based solutions, it would be great to get geocoding solution based on SQLite with SpatiaLite.

Has anyone worked on geocoding recently using SpatiaLite? 

Since I am new to SpatiaLite, would someone point me to resources describing the database layout as created by osm_map converter? What would be a good start for learning SpatiaLite? The cookbook?

Is there any OSM importer that creates a database which would suit geocoding (for example, with admin hierarchy resolved)?

I must say that I am new to the field and probably missing lots of important details...

Best wishes,

Rinigus

[Peter Johnson]

Hi Rinigus,

I realise it's been a long time since you posted but I just found your message now.

I am the founder of the ex-mapzen geocoding project called Pelias which is based on elasticsearch.

I'm a big fan of spatialite and have done a bunch of experiments for geocoding with sqlite, using the FTS 3/4 modules.

I'm also familiar with libpostal and know the author Al (we use libpostal for Pelias).

If you're interested in chatting more you can email me <first name>@geocode.earth

Also have a look at one of my repos which uses the FTS modules to provide admin-only (last line) geocoding: https://github.com/pelias/placeholder

-Peter