Does SimpleGeo provide ZIP code to latitude/longitude mapping?

I'm working with SimpleGeo API and I need to get place's latitude/longitude by ZIP code or city name. I know there is a plenty of questions in SO about getting coordinates by ZIP code, and there are many nice databases for it. But are they something that correlates closely with SimpleGeo's data? I don't want, having a precise city name/ZIP code that exists in SimpleGeo's database, to get to nowhere just because my database differs from SG's one.

Alternatively, I can move completely to Foursquare API, if it provides such data, but this is less preferable.

So, my questions are:

1. Can I get latitude/longitude by ZIP code or city name through SimpleGeo (or at least Foursquare)?
2. If not, can I use other databases (e.g. MaxMind or Geonames) to get same 开发者_如何学Goresults? Should I care about differences between databases at all?

Yes, you can use the SimpleGeo Context APIs to do this. Call the SimpleGeo context endpoint with the city name or zip code as the address parameter like this: http://api.simplegeo.com/1.0/context/address.json?address=98006

The response has the latitude and longitude embedded in the "query" part of the JSON blob returned:
{ "query":{ "latitude":40.745717, "longitude":-73.988121 ... }, ... }

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
-Nikhil

In case it helps... Here's how you can use google's geocoder to get the lat/lng for zipcode. Say you have an HTML input with the id 'location' (uses the jqueryui autocomplete widget):

// insert a div for autocomplete results
$("#location").after('<div id="location-results"></div>');

$("#location").autocomplete({
    appendTo:$("#location-results"),
    minLength: 3,
    open: acOpen,
    select: acSelect,
    close: acClose,
    source: acSource
});

function acOpen(event, ui){
// no op, but put code here to handle results list open if you need it
}

function acSelect(event, ui){
    // fired when user selects a result from the autocomplete list
    // assuming you are using the json2.js library for json parsing/decoding
    alert(JSON.stringify(ui.item));
    // the lat/lng is in ui.item.latLng.lat() and ui.item.latLng.lng()
    // ui.item.latLng is of type google.maps.LatLng (see v3 api)
}

function function acClose(event, ui){
// no op, but put code here to handle results list close if you need it
}

function acSource(request, response) {
    // implements the autocomplete source for the widget
    geocoder.geocode( {'address': request.term }, function(results, status) {
        if(undefined!==results){
            var postal_code='';
            var city = ''; 
            var state = '';
            var country = '';
            response($.map(results, function(item) {
              $.each(item.address_components, function(item_i, item_v){
                $.each(item_v.types, function(type_i, type_v){
                  switch(type_v){
                    case "locality": case "administrative_area_level_3":
                      city = item_v.long_name;
                    break;
                    case "administrative_area_level_2":
                    break;
                    case "street_number":
                    break;
                    case "route":
                    break;
                    case "administrative_area_level_1":
                  state = item_v.long_name;
                break;
                case "country":
                  country = item_v.long_name;
                break;
                case "postal_code":
                  postal_code = item_v.long_name;
                break;
              }
        });
          });
              // the object that gets returned and is ui.item on select event
          return {
            label   : item.formatted_address,
            value   : item.formatted_address,
            latLng  : item.geometry.location,
            country     : country, 
                state       : state, 
                city        : city,  
                postal_code : postal_code,
            source  : "google"
          };
        }));
        }
      }
    }
}

google's geocoder can geocode zipcodes, no problem.