inhabited

inhabited is a tiny library for Node.JS to determine whether a location may be inhabited or not. It is used in http://forecast.io/ to quickly short-circuit geocoding queries (which are expensive) for locations far from human habitation. (In such cases, Forecast labels those locations "Middle of Nowhere." Go ahead and try it: open up Forecast via the link above, and then click and drag the location marker on the globe into the middle of the ocean.)

Usage

The inhabited module is a single function, which takes a latitude, longitude, and callback function as arguments. That callback function will be called with two arguments: an optional error and a boolean. That boolean will be "true" if the location specified may be inhabited, and will be "false" if the location is definitely not inhabited.

var inhabited = require("inhabited");

// <40.7144, -74.0060> happens to be in New York City.
console.log(inhabited(40.7144, -74.0060)); // prints "true"

// <-29.5065, -136.5820> happens to be in the middle of the South Pacific.
console.log(inhabited(-29.5065, -136.5820)); // prints "false"

License

To the extend possible by law, The Dark Sky Company, LLC has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this library.