Retrieve the french department coordinates using wikipedia and google geolocation API.

french_dep_coords.py

from collections import OrderedDict
from itertools import tee
import time
from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET

from pygeocoder import Geocoder
import requests


wiki_url = u"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_pr%C3%A9fectures_de_France"


def get_prefectures():
    resp = requests.get(wiki_url)
    resp.raise_for_status()
    tree = ET.fromstring(resp.content)
    table = tree.find(".//center//table")
    data = OrderedDict()
    for row in table.iterfind(".//tr"):
        if row.find("./td"):
            code = row.find("./th").text
            dep = row.find("./td[1]/a").text
            pref = row.find("./td[2]/a").text
            data["%s (%s)" % (dep, code)] = pref

    return data


def get_coords():  # FYI, it'll work by batches, because we get kicked out by google API
    data = get_prefectures()
    items = data.items()
    for dep, prefecture in items:
        lat, lon = Geocoder.geocode("%s France" % prefecture)[0].coordinates
        print '"%s": {"lat": %s, "lon": %s}' % (dep, lat, lon)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    get_coords()