I'm using / to generate some random user data for testing. I'd like to geocode the latitude and longitude that provides to attach the real city/state/country information instead of the totally fake info that RandomUser provides. However, many of the actual lat/long values on these objects turn out to be in the middle of the ocean.

Is there an API, or some other method, that will let me get random coordinates which are always over land? I've seen this: Random geographic coordinates (on land, avoid ocean) But surely there must be some more efficient way than to just guess-and-check with constant geocoding until you find one that works, right?

I'm using https://randomuser.me/ to generate some random user data for testing. I'd like to geocode the latitude and longitude that provides to attach the real city/state/country information instead of the totally fake info that RandomUser provides. However, many of the actual lat/long values on these objects turn out to be in the middle of the ocean.

Is there an API, or some other method, that will let me get random coordinates which are always over land? I've seen this: Random geographic coordinates (on land, avoid ocean) But surely there must be some more efficient way than to just guess-and-check with constant geocoding until you find one that works, right?

• javascript
• random
• geocoding

• > real city/state/country information ... Don't you just want a list of cities of the world including their centre point? (pick one at random, weighted by its total surface area) Or is it really important to distribute within each city? – drekbour Commented Jun 18, 2019 at 21:27
• @drekbour No, because cities don't cover all the land area. Far from it. – David Knipe Commented Jun 18, 2019 at 21:40
• Here is a thought: download a clear blue tile from a map tile provider. sha1 hash this PNG. randomly create the lat/long coordinates. grap a tile on this location. sha1 hash this tile and check if the hashes match. there is a 1 in 3 chance its not the same clear blue tile right? – dehart Commented Jun 18, 2019 at 22:00
• You ask for an "efficient" solution without saying what your metric for efficiency is. Efficiency is defined as output quality divided by cost; what are your metrics for quality and cost? – Eric Lippert Commented Jun 18, 2019 at 23:54
• @EricLippert Efficient as in "not even potentially unbounded" – IceMetalPunk Commented Jun 19, 2019 at 15:10

2 Answers 2

https://3geonames/ Click on "Pick a random location at or near land"

The API is here: https://api.3geonames/?randomland=yes (for a random location on land)

or https://api.3geonames/?random=yes for any other kind of random location.

Update: As of September 2020 you can pick a random location in any given country. For example https://3geonames/randomland.NL will return a random location in the Netherlands.

For what is worth, there exists an open source library called OpenAddresses that can be used for your exact purpose as well as all kinds of purposes. I'm using it in several projects.

Using Javascript fetch

fetch('https://batch.openaddresses.io/api/data', {
    method: 'GET',
    withCredentials: true,
    credentials: 'include',
    headers: {
        'Authorization': 'oa.1234-your-token-here-5678',
        'Content-Type': 'application/json'
    }
});

With the list data function you can get the latest successful run of a given geographic area of your liking.