Helper class to get latitude and longitude for a location

GeoLatLng.java

package com.rishav.hadoop.hive.ql.udf.utils;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.commons.httpclient.DefaultHttpMethodRetryHandler;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpException;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpStatus;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.URIException;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.methods.GetMethod;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.params.HttpMethodParams;
import org.apache.commons.httpclient.util.URIUtil;
import org.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;

public class GeoLatLng {
	public static Float[] getLatLng(String location) {
		//		String geoPoints = null;
		Float[] geoPoints = new Float[] {null, null};
		// if input is null return null array
		if (location == null ) return null;

		String loc_uri = null;


		try {
			loc_uri = URIUtil.encodeQuery("http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=" + location);
		} catch (URIException e) {
			System.err.println("ERROR: URI encoding failed");
			e.printStackTrace();
			System.exit(1);
		}

		// Create an instance of HttpClient.
		HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

		// Create a method instance.
		GetMethod method = new GetMethod(loc_uri);

		// Provide custom retry handler is necessary
		method.getParams().setParameter(HttpMethodParams.RETRY_HANDLER,
				new DefaultHttpMethodRetryHandler(3, false));


		try {
			// Execute the method.
			int statusCode = client.executeMethod(method);

			if (statusCode != HttpStatus.SC_OK) {
				System.err.println("Method failed: " + method.getStatusLine());
			}

			// Read the response body.
			byte[] responseBody = method.getResponseBody();
			String responseStr = new String(responseBody);

			JSONObject response = new JSONObject(responseStr);
			JSONObject latlng = response.getJSONArray("results")
					.getJSONObject(0).getJSONObject("geometry")
					.getJSONObject("location");

			try {
				geoPoints[0] = new Float(latlng.get("lat").toString());
				geoPoints[1] = new Float(latlng.get("lng").toString());
			} catch (Exception e) {
				geoPoints[0] = null; 
				geoPoints[1] = null;
			}

			return geoPoints;
		} catch (HttpException e) {
			System.err.println("Fatal protocol violation: " + e.getMessage());
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			System.err.println("Fatal transport error: " + e.getMessage());
			e.printStackTrace();
		} catch (JSONException e) {
			return geoPoints;
		} finally {
			// Release the connection.
			method.releaseConnection();
		}
		return geoPoints;
	}
}