Look up coordinates for city names

geonames-city-coord.R

library(geonames)

# list of city names (in Afghanistan)
cities <- c("Gereshk", "Lashkar Gah", "Marjah", "Nad-e Ali")
                                                                                                                                                                          -5L), class = "data.frame")
# conveninence function to look up and format results
GNsearchAF <- function(x) {
  res <- GNsearch(name=x, country="AF")
  return(res[1, ])
}

# loop over city names and reformat
GNresult <- sapply(cities, GNsearchAF)
GNresult <- do.call("rbind", GNresult)
GNresult <- cbind(city=row.names(GNresult), 
                  subset(GNresult, select=c("lng", "lat", "adminName1")))