Explore Entrypoint
The Explore Entrypoint retrieves a list of relevant places nearby a given position or area. It answers the question "What interesting places are in the viewport of the map?" The results presented to the user are confined to those located in the current map view or search area and are ordered by popularity.
Users can optionally provide categories of places they are interested in.
As with other entrypoints, the location to be used should be passed as a location context.
at and in, are mutually exclusive and can't be passed at the same time. The Explore Entrypoint is a Places (Search) API Core entrypoint.
Entrypoint URI
/discover/explore Entrypoint Parameters
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| at | Position (format: latitude,longitude[;cgen=(map|gps|sgps)][;u=\d+]); required, unless one of the Geolocation or X-Map-Viewport headers or the in are set. Note: [;cgen=(map|gps|sgps)][;u=\d+] is DEPRECATED | Coordinates of search location expressed as latitude, longitude. Additional parameters can be passed which provide more context such as the uncertainty and how the coordinates were generated. For example, "52.5304417,13.4111201", "52.5304417,13.4111201;cgen=gps;u=100" or "52.5304417,13.4111201;u=100". For a full description, see the Location Contexts documentation. |
| in | Area; required, unless one of the Geolocation or X-Map-Viewport headers or the at parameter are set. | This parameter limits results to the boundary of the specified area. The search area can be expressed as:
|
| cat | Comma-separated list; optional | A comma-separated list of category ids defining an OR-filter that all places reachable through the resource must match. For a list of supported categories, see the Categories documentation. Resources without an explicit category set will use the following default set of categories:
|
| drilldown | Boolean; optional | If this flag is set to "true", result set will contain links to a further discover query based on the current query. For example result set may contain discover query links that restrict result set to a certain category (category drill down). To request a further drill down or in this case example, to expose subcategory filters on chosen discover query, application has to append the drilldown=true parameter to the chosen discovery query link. Supported values are:
|
| cs | Comma-separated list; optional | A comma-separated ordered list of category systems defining which type of category systems should be returned in the response. Valid category systems are 'places', 'cuisines', and 'pds'. For example cs=places,cuisines |
GET Method
The GET method provides access to popular places for the given location context and matching the category filter criteria.
Depending on the location context, the number of relevant places might be large. Therefore the GET method may not only return places, but also suggestions for additional filter criteria that allow users to interactively refine the classes of places they are interested in.
Representation Modifiers
The following options are available in this context:
| Parameter | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| size | Number (non-negative integer); optional | The maximum number of result items in each collection. |
| tf | String; optional; default: html. | Text format. Determines how rich text properties such as location.address.text should be rendered. Note: plain text can still be multiline. In this case newline symbol ("\n") is used to separate lines. Supported values are:
|
| show_refs (DEPRECATED) | Comma-separated list; optional | A list of one or more external system names or reference types. This parameter exposes place related external references in response. For a full description see Representation Modifiers documentation. |
| show_content (DEPRECATED) | Comma-separated list; optional | A list of one or more available content types you can add to the response. For a full description see Representation Modifiers documentation. |
For additional information and examples, see Changing Responses with Representation Modifiers.
Response Media Type
Responses to requests to this endpoint will have the urn:nlp-types:search media type. See the urn:nlp-types:search media type documentation for details about the structure and content of the response.
Request Example
https://places.sit.ls.hereapi.com/places/v1/discover/explore
?app_id={YOUR_APP_ID}
&app_code={YOUR_APP_CODE}
&at=52.50449,13.39091
&pretty
Response Example
{
"search": {
"context": {
"location": {
"position": [53, 14]
}
}
},
"results":{
"items":[
{
"position": [52.498619, 13.37681],
"distance": 1159,
"title": "German Museum of Technology Berlin (Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin)",
"averageRating": 5,
"category": {
"id": "landmark-attraction",
"title": "Landmark/Attraction",
"href": "http://...",
"type": "urn:nlp-types:category"
},
"icon": "http://...",
"vicinity": "Trebbiner 9\n10963 Berlin\nGermany",
"type": "urn:nlp-types:place",
"href": "http://..."
"id": "276u33d8-1cca7647c58a49d3a86b884a923ffa19"
},
{
"title": "Eat & Drink",
"icon": "http://...",
"type": "urn:nlp-types:search",
"href": "http://..."
},
{
"title": "Going Out",
"icon": "http://...",
"type": "urn:nlp-types:search",
"href": "http://..."
},
{
"title": "Sights & Museums",
"icon": "http://...",
"type": "urn:nlp-types:search",
"href": "http://..."
}
]
}
}