Quick & dirty utility to geocode an address into lat/lng

geocode.py

import urllib
import urllib2
import json

def geocode(address):
	"""Quick & Dirty utility to get geocoded lat/lng from Google Geocode API"""

	address = urllib.quote(address.replace(' ', '+').encode('utf-8'))
	query = 'http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=%s&sensor=false' % address
	raw_json = None

	try:
		response = urllib2.urlopen(query)
		raw_json = response.read()
	except urllib2.HTTPError, e:
		return None
	except urllib2.URLError, e:
		return None

	if not raw_json:
		return None

	try:
		json_response = json.loads(raw_json)
		lat = json_response['results'][0]['geometry']['location']['lat']
		lng = json_response['results'][0]['geometry']['location']['lng']
	except Exception:
		return None

	return lat, lng


if __name__ == '__main__':
	print geocode('Cromwell Rd, London SW7 5BD, UK')