all church locations (data dump)

Hi there, is it possible for me to get a data dump of all the US church building locations? I would like to take all those addresses and format them for my TomTom. While traveling it would be great to just simply look up on my TomTom POI the location and time of the nearest ward.

I have already taken the mls export and programatically created a POI for all the members in my ward and it works great. Pretty neat actually, but just need a way to get all the ward buildings. If you have a webservice I can hit that would work just as well.

trhodes wrote:Hi there, is it possible for me to get a data dump of all the US church building locations? I would like to take all those addresses and format them for my TomTom. While traveling it would be great to just simply look up on my TomTom POI the location and time of the nearest ward.

I have already taken the mls export and programatically created a POI for all the members in my ward and it works great. Pretty neat actually, but just need a way to get all the ward buildings. If you have a webservice I can hit that would work just as well.

I can't provide official information about whether the Church will provide web services or data dumps for just anyone to download, as I am only a volunteer community member. I seriously doubt a data dump being made available, and web services seem only somewhat likely. The Church has a web site that will find nearest meetinghouses (and/or assigned wards) to a specific location: http://maps.lds.org

There is no way for the site to give you all meetinghouses everywhere though, and I think that is most definitely by design. If you have a data plan or web browser on your phone, then that's probably your best bet.

ummm..I wonder why though? Because if the information is freely on the web, which it is as you pointed out, then why couldn't a person have it all at one time? Also, before the maps.lds.org website, there use to be another site where you could search for meeting houses. If someone took the time they could have built an application which would have scrapped the pages to get all the information they wanted. Personally, I wouldn't want to do this, but it could have been done. I have scapped pages in the past and it's not really all that fun.

Another thing, there are POI's for all temples in the US and it's a great tool.

Oh, I just thought of another thing, any member can grab every single members name, address and phone number (if listed) in their entire Stake. I'm getting ready to create a POI for a member of the Stake Presidency so he can easily find his way to those members. Tools to help the work go forward.

Again, I'm not sure I understand the reasoning. However, if it's the Church's official position then of course I'm cool with it.

BTW, cute kids.

trhodes wrote:ummm..I wonder why though? Because if the information is freely on the web, which it is as you pointed out, then why couldn't a person have it all at one time? Also, before the maps.lds.org website, there use to be another site where you could search for meeting houses. If someone took the time they could have built an application which would have scrapped the pages to get all the information they wanted. Personally, I wouldn't want to do this, but it could have been done. I have scapped pages in the past and it's not really all that fun.

Another thing, there are POI's for all temples in the US and it's a great tool.

Oh, I just thought of another thing, any member can grab every single members name, address and phone number (if listed) in their entire Stake. I'm getting ready to create a POI for a member of the Stake Presidency so he can easily find his way to those members. Tools to help the work go forward.

Again, I'm not sure I understand the reasoning. However, if it's the Church's official position then of course I'm cool with it.

BTW, cute kids.

Haha, thanks.

Well, it's the knowledge of knowing the location of every meetinghouse in the US (or even the world) that I think the average person just doesn't need to know. I mean yes, it is public information and you can obtain a few meetinghouses around a specific location, but I can't think of a way to scrape this information in a reasonable way. Maps.lds.org asks for an address, city, state, and/or country and then it will show you meetinghouses nearby. In order to scrape you would have to go through a very thorough set of cities or even down to addresses to get everything. The interface makes it difficult to get more than a small set of meetinghouses at one time, and that is why I said I think it is by design. It appears intentionally difficult to get all or most of the data in one query.

I'm not wanting to be too difficult, but it's not as hard as one would think. The website allows you to search simply by zip code. Take all the zip codes (http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.txt)....throw them programmatically onto the search page for maps.lds.org and scrape the findings. Write a program that will search and remove duplicates from a text file or database you just filled from maps.lds.org; then call the yahoo API webservice to get the long and lat coordinates; then format for your TomTom POI file.

The part I don't want to do is scrape the page; it would be easier if I could just have all the ward building locations and meeting times. I have everything else written and ready to go and would make it free to anyone wanting the POI.

All I'm stating, is that it can be done and would love the opportunity to make it avaiable for others to enjoy.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

trhodes wrote:I'm not wanting to be too difficult, but it's not as hard as one would think. The website allows you to search simply by zip code. Take all the zip codes (http://www.census.gov/tiger/tms/gazetteer/zips.txt)....throw them programmatically onto the search page for maps.lds.org and scrape the findings. Write a program that will search and remove duplicates from a text file or database you just filled from maps.lds.org; then call the yahoo API webservice to get the long and lat coordinates; then format for your TomTom POI file.

The part I don't want to do is scrape the page; it would be easier if I could just have all the ward building locations and meeting times. I have everything else written and ready to go and would make it free to anyone wanting the POI.

All I'm stating, is that it can be done and would love the opportunity to make it avaiable for others to enjoy.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

I'm not sure but I believe that the reason the Church does not publish a list of all meeting houses world-wide would in part be for security reasons. Because of this, I'd check with CHQ before posting this information.

Tom

I can't find the website right now. It's like lds meetinghouses and it's a blog but i do have the downloaded file for you. oh, it's not letting me do the attachment. you can email me at pstanek@homeengineering.org and i can send it to you. He has all of the meetinghouses in north america mapped.

trhodes wrote: ... then call the yahoo API webservice to get the long and lat coordinates; then format for your TomTom POI file.

Aside from any potential problems the Church might have with publishing this compilation of information, the method described above would seem to violate the Yahoo! Maps API Terms of Use:

1. Licensed Uses and Restrictions.
...
YOU SHALL NOT:
...
(ix) use the stand-alone geocoder for any use other than displaying Yahoo! Maps or displaying points on Yahoo! Maps;

There are other methods of geocoding, but I think this one is coloring outside the legal lines. (IANAL)

As for the desirability of publishing the addresses of meetinghouse locations, and related questions raised about security, I have to wonder if there is a significant issue. The addresses of LDS meetinghouses are hardly a secret. The area meetinghouses are listed in my local phone book, and I assume the same is true for other locations. Online directories are also easy to find in the United States. A search herefor "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" returned more than 22,000 entries.

boomerbubba wrote:As for the desirability of publishing the addresses of meetinghouse locations, and related questions raised about security, I have to wonder if there is a significant issue. The addresses of LDS meetinghouses are hardly a secret. The area meetinghouses are listed in my local phone book, and I assume the same is true for other locations. Online directories are also easy to find in the United States. A search herefor "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" returned more than 22,000 entries.

The original question was why the Church does not publish online data on all meetinghouse locations. It seems reasonable to assume that it is not because of privacy concerns; as several people have pointed out, that information is public knowledge.

But just because the Church could publish such information does not mean that they consider it to be worth the effort. What exactly would the benefit to the Church be? It seems like it would benefit a very small number of members. On the other hand, deciding how to publish it, gathering the information, developing the web service or other interface to deliver the information, and keeping it up to date would cost some money and take time that could be spent on other more important priorities. In my opinion, it is simply a matter of cost-benefit analysis, and the benefit does not justify the cost.

Alan_Brown wrote:In my opinion, it is simply a matter of cost-benefit analysis, and the benefit does not justify the cost.

That seems more plausible.

I know on the Garmin Nuvi GPS's under the points of interest it has most non LDS church's pre-loaded onto the Maps.

I always wondered why our church did not. Has the LDS church requested to not post that info?

I would like to have them there. Who knows maybe a few people would stop up at our church's based on finding a meetinghouse they otherwise would not have found.

thesmtih7, i agree with you that it would be a benefit to members and non-members alike.

As concerning the cost benefit, it would be very unusual for the church to not have their meeting house locations placed in a database somewhere. The cost to publish the meeting house locations in a simple csv would be ridiculously easy. Give someone like me (not as smart as church programmers) one to two days worth of time and I'd have it done and published. I don't think anyone is asking for anything complicated...simple data dump would do just fine.

As for this thread, there's been a lot of speculation on why or why not....can someone from the church technology group reply with an official church statement? For example, Joel Dehlin or David Burggraaf maybe?

For clarity sake, I would like to know if I could have a dump (in whatever format you choose) of all the US church meeting house locations? I would then like to take those locations and format them for a TomTom or Garmin gps system and make it available to all who wish to use it.
http://tech.lds.org/forum/../index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=52

Hi all, if anyone is interested; I went ahead and created a program that will get you all your membership information and create a GPS file for you. It also grabs all the US Temple sites and US Ward Buildings.

You can read about and download the application (and other GPS files) on this website I created.

http://www.mormongps.com

trhodes wrote:Hi all, if anyone is interested; I went ahead and created a program that will get you all your membership information and create a GPS file for you. It also grabs all the US Temple sites and US Ward Buildings...

Before posting this utility that gathers sensitive data, did you check with CHQ to get their reaction as noted below by Tom Welch, Church Employee and Site Administrator?

tomw wrote:I'm not sure but I believe that the reason the Church does not publish a list of all meeting houses world-wide would in part be for security reasons. Because of this, I'd check with CHQ before posting this information.

Tom

I have not posted anything with sensitive data in it. Anything that I have posted is public domain and very easily attainable from the church itself. The list of ward meeting houses is a community based organization of user submitted meeting house locations. The membership application cannot do a thing without the users own login, so again it is no different than a member going to their unit website and looking at their ward members.

I do appreciate the question though.

trhodes wrote:I have not posted anything with sensitive data in it. Anything that I have posted is public domain and very easily attainable from the church itself. The list of ward meeting houses is a community based organization of user submitted meeting house locations. The membership application cannot do a thing without the users own login, so again it is no different than a member going to their unit website and looking at their ward members.

I do appreciate the question though.

You may want to consider the Church policy regarding directories (See CHI, book 1, page 177). The membership information your membership application strips from the LUWS is a directory.

Since the LUWS Membership Directory is a directory it adheres to the CHI policy. That policy requires a statement with specific cautions be provided. Check out the top of the Ward Membership Directory page and you will see the statement - "Information on this page is for Church use only and is not to be used for any commercial, business, or political purpose." This is in compliance with Church policy regarding directories.

Your membership application must adhere to the policies and procedures set out in the CHI since the source of that information is a Church directory. It must provide a statement similar to the one seen on the LUWS membership page. Additionally a member creating a directory from LUWS membership data must also be made aware that this information should not be distributed outside the stake or ward boundaries. Copying the content of a LUWS Membership Directory also requires permission of the bishop or stake president.

Looking at the CHI instructions I would say that the membership information provided on the LUWS is sensitive data. To ensure your membership application adheres to Church policy and procedures it would be best to contact Church headquarters to get direction from them.