We accurately geolocate venues and then check whether there is a Foursquare venue for that place. Even in the US, but especially in Asia or Africa, lots of Foursquare venues are not correctly mapped. Out of concern for accuracy and not wishing to introduce duplicates into Foursquare - and, until recently, unable to update existing venues in Foursquare - we mapped and then matched our places with venues already in Foursquare.
Previously, with the iFrame-based button, there was no problem if the coordinates of our place were not exactly the same as those in Foursquare. We could attach the Foursquare venue id that corresponded to the venue in our system, and our user could save it to their Foursquare. But now the iFrame button at
http://foursquare.com/button.html?vid=
seems to have stopped working.
Now, for those previously nonexistent Foursquare venues that we added ourselves or, seemingly, where there is a very close match with the lat/long we supply, the new javascript-based button works.
But for many others, painstakingly matched over the years, because our correct locations don't match the incorrect ones carelessly entered into Foursquare, the "Save to Foursquare" button is useless on our site.
I can imagine that this would also be a problem where the venue has been re-located and a publisher's location metadata reflects the old location.
Why not just use Foursquare venue ids?
You can use Foursquare venue IDs with our more modern widgets: https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/widgets. The embedding pattern is a little different but there is a vid key you can pass in to have the widget be associated with a particular venue.
Related
The last days I spent trying around with the Foursquare Places API.
When I send a normal "search" query for venues:
https://api.foursquare.com/v2/venues/search?ll=48.03468,14.2091&client_id=<client_id>&client_secret=<client_secret>&v=20181010&radius=8000&categoryId=<a bunch of categories>
Then I often get duplicated venues (same restaurant for instance just another name for it) or venues which are not existing anymore.
Is this normal or is the reason for this that I use the "Sandbox" Account and not a bought one (like StartUp).
Another question:
The 'Opening Hours' query (/venue/id/hours) does not provide opening hours. Same reason, or is there just no data available in the Foursquare Database?
Is their a compromise between using the categoriesID of the search endpoint and the extended information given from the explore endpoint. I seem to be having issues querying specified venues queried using their categories ID and also having an extended list of information regarding the venue
In order to associate venues you filtered with categoryId in search with their detail information (like tags, tips, photos, etc), I recommend you make a second call to the venue detail endpoint.
Yes, this means you would have to do one request to venue detail per resulting venue filtered in search.
Foursquare does not match these two together for you.
A client is proposing an app that would display checkins from users who have agreed to share their foursquare info with us; the catch is that they would want to distinguish between checkins that are and aren't relevant to this app. Is there a way to handle that, for instance with user comments at the time of checkin?
You can always look at the category of the venue the user has checked into, which should be available from the check-in response, or filter by specific venues directly. You can also filtering by content in a check-in shout is also a viable idea; the #mom app does this.
this is a case for the real estate sector
is it possible to add residences for sale as a venue of the agency ? (not representing the office, but the product it self)?
Can this be done automatically through the real estate side (like a API feed to 4square) instead of using the bulkclaim excel file?
Will the system allow to manage authomaticly the venues (homes for sale) and delete them once they're sold?
You can always add venues using the venues/add endpoint, but you may not be able to instantly delete the venues. Also note that it's against foursquare's policies to add a person's home on foursquare without their explicit consent.
I'm using another venues provider, but would like to search Foursquare from the venue results of that provider for Foursquare checkins. Is this possible or would that be considered violating the TOS?
Why not read the Policy at https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/community ?
Whats written there as of writing this answer is that it is okay to extend their results with other data sources.
It is not okay to search across both foursquare and Google Places, then return a combination of their results/data.
What I would do if I am doing something I am not sure of is just ask them directly at https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/support
At the last paragraph they talk about policy (at the support page), says you can email them directly.