get lat, long of an address from the command line or in Python. Returns a JSON encoded string.

geocode.py

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# (c) 2014 one2seven GmbH, Switzerland
import urllib
import json
import sys 

def geocode_by_osm(address):
    """
    geocode an address using openstreet map
    """
    address = address.decode('utf-8')
    query_address = urllib.quote_plus(address.encode('utf-8'))
    query_param = "&".join((
      'addressdetails=1',
      'limit=1',
      'format=json',
      'q=%s' % query_address,
    ))
    request = "http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search/?%s" % query_param
    data = json.loads(urllib.urlopen(request).read())
    if len(data) > 0 and 'place_id' in data[0]:
        place = data[0]
        return {'query': address, 
                'place': place['display_name'],
                'lat': place['lat'], 
                'lon': place['lon']}
    return {}

def test():
    print geocode_by_osm('Zürich')

def main():
    if len(sys.argv) == 1:
        print "Syntax: python geocode.py <place>"
        exit(1)
    print json.dumps(geocode_by_osm(sys.argv[1]))

if __name__ == '__main__' and "get_ipython" not in dir():
    main()
if "get_ipython" in dir():
    test()

Example

From command line

$ python geocode.py Basel, Bahnhof
{"lat": "47.5581077", "query": "Basel,", "place": "Basel, Basel-Stadt, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera, Svizra", "lon": "7.5878261"}

From within a Python program:

from geocode import geocode_by_osm 

place = 'Basel'
coded = geocode_by_osm(place)
lat, long = coded.get('lat'), coded.get('lon')