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Using standard geocoding tasks

You can access a variety of online geocoding tasks from ESRI including address locators for Europe and North America, a street locator for the United States, and a world places locator. These standard (free) tasks are available to use in your ArcGIS software and GIS applications. You can connect directly to these online tasks through ArcGIS.com, the ArcGIS APIs, and ArcGIS 9.2 or higher.

The following online geocoding tasks are available:

• ESRI_Places_World: Use the World Places Locator to geocode world places including countries, states and provinces, administrative areas, cities, landmarks, water bodies, and more.
• TA_Address_EU: Use the European Address Locator to geocode addresses in Europe including street address, street name, city, and postal code. See European Country Codes for a list of valid inputs for the Country field.
• TA_Address_NA: Use the North American Address Locator to geocode addresses in the United States and Canada including street address, ZIP/postal code, city/state or city/province, and more.
• TA_Streets_US: Use the United States Street Locator to geocode street addresses in the United States.

The address locators are based on Tele Atlas 2009 Q2 reference data for North America and Tele Atlas 2009 Q1 reference data for Europe. The street locator is based on Tele Atlas 2009 Q2 reference data for the United States. The place finder is based primarily on the June 2009 GeoNames Data. The tasks support single address, reverse, and batch geocoding of up to 1,000 batch geocodes in a year.

NOTE: For external commercial use of ArcGIS Online geocoding tasks, you must purchase a subscription. If you're using the geocoding tasks for external commercial use or for more than 1,000 batch geocodes in a year, see Using the World Geocoding subscription.

To use the free ArcGIS Online locators with your application, see the appropriate section below and follow the instructions to get started:

• ArcGIS Desktop
• ArcGIS Server Manager .NET
• ArcGIS Server Web ADF
• ArcGIS APIs

ArcGIS Desktop

To connect to ArcGIS Online locators in ArcGIS Desktop use the URL: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services.

To add an ArcGIS Online address locator to an ArcMap document:

1. Click the Tools menu, point to Geocoding, then click Address Locator Manager.
2. Click Add in the Address Locator Manager dialog box.
3. In the Look in drop-down menu, select GIS Servers, click Add ArcGIS Server to highlight it, and click Add.
4. In the Add ArcGIS Server wizard, Select Use GIS Services and click Next.
5. Select Internet and enter the following Server URL: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services. Click Finish.
6. In the ArcGIS Server list, select "arcgis on tasks.arcgisonline.com" and click Add.
7. Select the Locators folder and click Add.
8. Select the locator you want to add to the ArcMap document and click Add.
9. Click Close.
   

For information on using the ArcGIS Online locators in ArcMap, see About managing address locators in ArcGIS Desktop Help.

ArcGIS Server Manager .NET

To connect to ArcGIS Server Manager .NET, use the URL: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services.

To use ArcGIS Online locators with ArcGIS Server Manager .NET:

1. In the Web Manager, create a web application, and click Add Task to add a new task.
2. Under Available Tasks, select Find Address, and click OK.
3. With Find Address selected, click Supporting Services.

   

4. Click Add in the Supporting Services dialog box.
5. Select Add GIS Server.
6. In the Add Server dialog box:
   1. In the Type drop-down menu, select ArcGIS Server Internet.
   2. Enter the following for the Catalog URL: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services
   3. Click Add to add the connection to the ArcGIS Online task server.

      

7. In the Available Services dialog box:
   1. In the Layers in drop-down menu, select the Locators folder.
   2. Select the Geocode Service you want to use in your web application, for example, ESRI_Places_World.
   3. Click OK.

      

   The Geocode Service displays in the Supporting Services dialog box.

8. If you want to set a task name, click Configure. Enter a Task Name, Button Text, and a Help Tip if desired.

   

For information on using the ArcGIS Online locators with the ArcGIS Server Manager .NET, see the About publishing a GIS resource to the server and About the Find Address task topics in ArcGIS Server .NET Help.

ArcGIS Server Web ADF

To connect to ArcGIS Server Web ADFs, use the URL: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services.

When building a custom application using software such as Microsoft Visual Studio, the locator is added through the Geocode Resource Manager.

1. In the Geocode Resource Manager, add a GeocodeResourceItem Collection Editor.
2. Click Add to add a GeocodeResourceItem to the collection.
3. Set the definition data source in the Geocode Resource Definition Editor:
   1. In the Type drop-down menu, select ArcGIS Server Internet.
   2. Enter the following for the Data Source: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/service
   3. For Resource, click the button and select the desired task in the Locators folder, for example, ESRI_Places_World.
   4. Click OK.

   

4. Add a FindAddressTask for the new GeocodeResourceItem.
5. Configure the Find Address Properties for the new FindAddressTask resource.

For information on using the ArcGIS Online locators with the ArcGIS Server Web ADF, see the documentation for your Web ADF.

ArcGIS APIs

ArcGIS API for Flex, JavaScript, Silverlight, mobile, and REST users should use the following server connection for Web applications: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/rest

ArcGIS Server SOAP API users should use the following server connection for Web applications: http://tasks.arcgisonline.com/arcgis/services

For information on using the ArcGIS Online locators with an ArcGIS API, see the documentation for the appropriate API:

• ArcGIS API for Flex API
• ArcGIS API for JavaScript
• ArcGIS API for Silverlight
• ArcGIS Server REST API
• ArcGIS Server SOAP API
• Mobile APIs