Quick CLI duder to geocode a place and return coordinates

geocoder.sh

####################################################
# quick bash script to geocode a place name and    #
# load tab-separated coordinates to clipboard      #
# (n.b. uses osx `pbcopy`, so swap in whatever     #
#  works for your os in the last line)             #
#                                                  #
# you'll need jq and an opencage geocode API key,  #
# which i stored in an environment variable called #
# $OPENCAGE_GEOCODE_API                            #
#                                                  #
# example usage: ./geocode.sh "pavillion, wy"      #
#                                                  #
# https://stedolan.github.io/jq/                   #
# https://opencagedata.com                         #
####################################################

# check that something got passed to the script
if [ "$1" == "" ]; then
  echo "gotta hand me a place name to geocode, bub"
  exit 1
fi

# replace spaces with %20
ORIGINAL_PLACE=$1
PLACE=${ORIGINAL_PLACE// /%20}

# make the API call and hand results off to jq, targeting "geometry" in the result
GEOM=$(curl -s "https://api.opencagedata.com/geocode/v1/json?q=$PLACE&key=$OPENCAGE_GEOCODE_KEY&limit=1&pretty=1" | jq '.results[0].geometry')

# ~~~ TODO - check to make sure we actually got something back ~~~

# grab lat and lng
LAT=$(echo $GEOM | jq '.lat')
LNG=$(echo $GEOM | jq '.lng')

# lemme know what happened
echo "Coordinates copied for $ORIGINAL_PLACE: $LAT, $LNG"

# load tab-separated coordinates pair into my clipboard
echo $LAT'\t'$LNG | pbcopy

(i use this mainly for one-off things where i need to copy/paste lat/lng pairs into a spreadsheet next to a place name but i don't need to roll up A Whole Thing ( manually filling in small bits of missing data, etc.))