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Ask HN: Is there a free download of countries and their major cities available?
I've got an app that needs to list countries and major cities in a couple of drop down boxes. I found one but it costs $1049.95 - http://www.download32.com/geodatasource-world-cities-database--gold-edition--i24139.html. Anyone know of anything a little cheaper, like free?
- hugh 18y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries ? And then about eight hours' work to look up and type in the names of all the major cities in each country?
- globalrev 18y agoOr do some hacking...
- talkaboutadate 18y agoYep. That's what I thought. Thanks. Surely, if someone did this, s/he could charge a little for it to all the other developers out there.
- nnrcschmdt 18y agoDid you look at GeoNames? http://www.geonames.org/ http://www.geonames.org/ It would require you to do some parsing to filter what you need but the info is there.
- amarcus 18y agoJavascript code that displays a drop down of Coutry and State: http://javascript.internet.com/forms/country-state-drop-down.html http://javascript.internet.com/forms/country-state-drop-down... I know you wanted cities, but maybe this could do
- talkaboutadate 18y agoThanks, amarcus, but I needed cities too.
- galleypage 18y agoYou could use MONDIAL. http://www.dbis.informatik.uni-goettingen.de/Mondial/ http://www.dbis.informatik.uni-goettingen.de/Mondial/ The database is pretty extensive, but you should only need to query it once to get what you need.
- dkasper 18y agoYou could get the 2 largest cities in each country from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_and_second_largest_cities_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_and_seco... Or this has the capital and cities larger than the capital: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_and_largest_cities_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_and_largest_ci...
- globalrev 18y agoOk I found something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_and_larger_cities_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_and_larger_cit...
- talkaboutadate 18y agoThanks, guys/girls. Looking at the forums on geonames it seems like it's over kill and that it may be slow reading such a large database, and mondial seems to be the same. I think I may spend a day or two typing in the countries and cities myself!