get_country_window('United states of america')

[-135, -50, 22, 50]

import argparse
import json
import sys
import urllib


def main(args):
    url = u'http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?'
    query = []
    if args['street']:
        query.append('street={}'.format(args['street']))
    if args['city']:
        query.append('city={}'.format(args['city']))
    if args['county']:
        query.append('county={}'.format(args['county']))
    if args['country']:
        query.append('country={}'.format(args['country']))
    if args['postcode']:
        query.append('postalcode={}'.format(args['postcode']))
    if args['format']:
        query.append('format={}'.format(args['format']))
    else:
        query.append('format=json')
    if not args['street'] and not args['city'] and not args['county']
        and not args['country'] and not args['postcode']:
        query.append('q={}'.format(args['query']))

    url += '&'.join(query)

    results = urllib.urlopen(url).read()
    for result in json.loads(results):
        print '{0}, {1}: {2}'.format(
            result['lat'],
            result['lon'],
            result['display_name'].encode('utf-8')
        )


def parse_args():
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Geocoding utility')
    parser.add_argument('-s', '--street', nargs='+', help='House number and
                        street name', metavar=('NUMBER', 'NAME'))
    parser.add_argument('-i', '--city', help='City name')
    parser.add_argument('-c', '--county', help='County name')
    parser.add_argument('-r', '--country', help='Country name')
    parser.add_argument('-p', '--postcode', help='Postcode')
    parser.add_argument('-f', '--format', default='json', help='Format
                        [html|xml|json|jsonv2]')
    parser.add_argument('query', help='Query string to search for. Maybe used
                        instead of street, city, county, country, and
                        postcode', nargs='?')
    return vars(parser.parse_args())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main(parse_args())

wget http://thematicmapping.org/downloads/TM_WORLD_BORDERS-0.3.zip

def get_boundingbox_country(country, output_as='boundingbox'):
    """
    get the bounding box of a country in EPSG4326 given a country name

    Parameters
    ----------
    country : str
        name of the country in english and lowercase
    output_as : 'str
        chose from 'boundingbox' or 'center'.
         - 'boundingbox' for [latmin, latmax, lonmin, lonmax]
         - 'center' for [latcenter, loncenter]

    Returns
    -------
    output : list
        list with coordinates as str
    """
    # create url
    url = '{0}{1}{2}'.format('http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?country=',
                             country,
                             '&format=json&polygon=0')
    response = requests.get(url).json()[0]

    # parse response to list
    if output_as == 'boundingbox':
        lst = response[output_as]
        output = [float(i) for i in lst]
    if output_as == 'center':
        lst = [response.get(key) for key in ['lat','lon']]
        output = [float(i) for i in lst]
    return output

In [42]: get_boundingbox_country(country='netherlands')
Out[42]: [11.777, 53.7253321, -70.2695876, 7.2274985]

In [43]: get_boundingbox_country(country='holland')
Out[43]: [11.777, 53.7253321, -70.2695876, 7.2274985]

In [44]: get_boundingbox_country(country='nl')
Out[44]: [11.777, 53.7253321, -70.2695876, 7.2274985]

In [45]: get_boundingbox_country(country='nl', output_as='center')
Out[45]: [52.5001698, 5.7480821]