Acquiring Geonames Data

Primary Data

These files can be downloaded here:

~/data/Data/geonames $ cd ../geonames-2/
~/data/Data/geonames-2 $ ls -lah
total 3568232
drwxr-xr-x  14 craigtrim  staff   476B Mar 17 10:38 .
drwxr-xr-x  17 craigtrim  staff   578B Mar 17 10:38 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   306M Mar 17 10:31 allCountries.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   111M Mar 17 10:14 alternateNames.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   7.6M Mar 17 10:11 cities1000.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   2.1M Mar 17 10:11 cities15000.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   3.5M Mar 17 10:11 cities5000.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   1.3M Mar 17 10:11 hierarchy.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   184K Mar 17 10:11 no-country.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   825K Mar 17 10:11 shapes_simplified_low.json.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   824K Mar 17 10:11 shapes_simplified_low.zip
-rw-r--r--@  1 craigtrim  staff   169K Mar 17 10:11 userTags.zip

"allCountries.zip" contains all countries combined in one file, see 'geoname' table for columns

Geonames Table

geonameid	integer id of record in geonames database
name	name of geographical point (utf8) varchar(200)
asciiname	name of geographical point in plain ascii characters, varchar(200)
alternatenames	alternatenames, comma separated, ascii names automatically transliterated, convenience attribute from alternatename table, varchar(10000)
latitude	latitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
longitude	longitude in decimal degrees (wgs84)
feature class	see http
feature code	see http
country code	ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 2 characters
cc2	alternate country codes, comma separated, ISO-3166 2-letter country code, 200 characters
admin1 code	fipscode (subject to change to iso code), see exceptions below, see file admin1Codes.txt for display names of this code; varchar(20)
admin2 code	code for the second administrative division, a county in the US, see file admin2Codes.txt; varchar(80)
admin3 code	code for third level administrative division, varchar(20)
admin4 code	code for fourth level administrative division, varchar(20)
population	bigint (8 byte int)
elevation	in meters, integer
dem	digital elevation model, srtm3 or gtopo30, average elevation of 3''x3'' (ca 90mx90m) or 30''x30'' (ca 900mx900m) area in meters, integer. srtm processed by cgiar/ciat.
timezone	the timezone id (see file timeZone.txt) varchar(40)
modification date	date of last modification in yyyy-MM-dd format

 

Acquiring Files in Parts

As of 17-March-2016, all the individual geonames ZIP files could be downloaded with this script.  If you are on OS X, and don't have wget installed, install homebrew first, then use brew install wget. 

#!/bin/bash

download () {
 if [ -f "$1".zip ]
 then
  echo "$1.zip exists"
 else
  wget http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/"$1".zip
 fi
}

download "AD"
download "AE"
download "AF"
download "AG"
download "AI"
download "AL"
download "AM"
download "AN"
download "AO"
download "AQ"
download "AR"
download "AS"
download "AT"
download "AU"
download "AW"
download "AX"
download "AZ"
download "BA"
download "BB"
download "BD"
download "BE"
download "BF"
download "BG"
download "BH"
download "BI"
download "BJ"
download "BL"
download "BM"
download "BN"
download "BO"
download "BQ"
download "BR"
download "BS"
download "BT"
download "BV"
download "BW"
download "BY"
download "BZ"
download "CA"
download "CC"
download "CD"
download "CF"
download "CG"
download "CH"
download "CI"
download "CK"
download "CL"
download "CM"
download "CN"
download "CO"
download "CR"
download "CS"
download "CU"
download "CV"
download "CW"
download "CX"
download "CY"
download "CZ"
download "DE"
download "DJ"
download "DK"
download "DM"
download "DO"
download "DZ"
download "EC"
download "EE"
download "EG"
download "EH"
download "ER"
download "ES"
download "ET"
download "FI"
download "FJ"
download "FK"
download "FM"
download "FO"
download "FR"
download "GA"
download "GB"
download "GD"
download "GE"
download "GF"
download "GG"
download "GH"
download "GI"
download "GL"
download "GM"
download "GN"
download "GP"
download "GQ"
download "GR"
download "GS"
download "GT"
download "GU"
download "GW"
download "GY"
download "HK"
download "HM"
download "HN"
download "HR"
download "HT"
download "HU"
download "ID"
download "IE"
download "IL"
download "IM"
download "IN"
download "IO"
download "IQ"
download "IR"
download "IS"
download "IT"
download "JE"
download "JM"
download "JO"
download "JP"
download "KE"
download "KG"
download "KH"
download "KI"
download "KM"
download "KN"
download "KP"
download "KR"
download "KW"
download "KY"
download "KZ"
download "LA"
download "LB"
download "LC"
download "LI"
download "LK"
download "LR"
download "LS"
download "LT"
download "LU"
download "LV"
download "LY"
download "MA"
download "MC"
download "MD"
download "ME"
download "MF"
download "MG"
download "MH"
download "MK"
download "ML"
download "MM"
download "MN"
download "MO"
download "MP"
download "MQ"
download "MR"
download "MS"
download "MT"
download "MU"
download "MV"
download "MW"
download "MX"
download "MY"
download "MZ"
download "NA"
download "NC"
download "NE"
download "NF"
download "NG"
download "NI"
download "NL"
download "NO"
download "NP"
download "NR"
download "NU"
download "NZ"
download "OM"
download "PA"
download "PE"
download "PF"
download "PG"
download "PH"
download "PK"
download "PL"
download "PM"
download "PN"
download "PR"
download "PS"
download "PT"
download "PW"
download "PY"
download "QA"
download "RE"
download "RO"
download "RS"
download "RU"
download "RW"
download "SA"
download "SB"
download "SC"
download "SD"
download "SE"
download "SG"
download "SH"
download "SI"
download "SJ"
download "SK"
download "SL"
download "SM"
download "SN"
download "SO"
download "SR"
download "SS"
download "ST"
download "SV"
download "SX"
download "SY"
download "SZ"
download "TC"
download "TD"
download "TF"
download "TG"
download "TH"
download "TJ"
download "TK"
download "TL"
download "TM"
download "TN"
download "TO"
download "TR"
download "TT"
download "TV"
download "TW"
download "TZ"
download "UA"
download "UG"
download "UM"
download "US"
download "UY"
download "UZ"
download "VA"
download "VC"
download "VE"
download "VG"
download "VI"
download "VN"
download "VU"
download "WF"
download "WS"
download "XK"
download "YE"
download "YT"
download "YU"
download "ZA"
download "ZM"
download "ZW"

It can be convenient to work with a parts file for the purpose of testing a parser or data reader, rather than reading the entire allCountries.txt [1.3 GB] file each time.

References

1. [Official] Geonames Data Dump