Bing maps Rest API objects not the same

Question

I need to create an API services that calls Bing maps Rest API gets Address, Elevation and latitude and longitude values.

I see that there a Autosuggest that returns an Address object, I also see you have Find location by address api that also returns an Address object. My question is why both address object are not the same? and can it be the address adding the missing fields ?

As I need all the values from the address object from Autosuggest .I would like to call the Find location by address api and get a list of address with the latitude and longitude values as well. Currently I making 3 api calls

Answer 1

The autosuggest and Location APIs, do use the same Address class/object, however this is a lower-level property of the main response from each API.

The autosuggest API returns an autosuggest response that can contain a LocalBusiness, Place, or Address object. All of these have an address property that is an Address object. The __type property in these responses provide an additional insight on the type of result.

The location APIs, return a Location object that has an address property that is the same Address object used in the autosuggest API.

There are some differences in the response objects, but they all include the same Address object.

The autotsuggest responses do not include location details such as latitude/longitude as this information has a higher cost and including this information would mean this service would have to have the same cost per request as the Location API. By separating out this information, the Autosugget API only generates a 1/10th of a transaction per request (10 times cheaper than the Location API). Since in a normal autosuggest experience, a user will likely generate 5 to 10 requests to this service, when typing a single input, this makes the overall cost of this experience significantly cheaper. If each request was charged a full transaction, most companies would quickly find the cost of this experience to be extreme.

For your scenario, the expectation would be atleast 3 requests as defined below.

• One or more to the autosuggest API with the users input.
• One taking the formattedAddress value from the Address object in the autosuggest response and passing it into the location query API to get the latitude/longitude details.
• One taking the latitude/longitude information into the elevation API. Note you can pass in multiple points into this API, and thus get the elevations for an array of address coordinates.