latitude and longitude
Latitude and longitude are a pair of numbers (coordinates) used to describe a position on the plane of a geographic coordinate system. The numbers are in decimal degrees format and range from -90
to 90
for latitude and -180
to 180
for longitude.
For example, Washington DC has a latitude 38.8951
and longitude -77.0364
. In API calls you will often see the numbers placed together and separated by a comma: -77.0364,38.8951
. In some cases, altitude can be included as a third value.
Find a location's coordinates
If you need to find a location's latitude and longitude, you can use the Mapbox Search playground, which allows you to search for a location and retrieve its coordinates in longitude,latitude
format.
Coordinate format handling
Different Mapbox services handle coordinate order differently. When you start using a Mapbox product, read its documentation to see how the latitude and longitude should be formatted. For example, Mapbox GL JS and most Mapbox web services APIs use the format longitude,latitude
, while other products including the Mapbox Maps SDK for iOS use the format latitude,longitude
.
Learn how to add Markers to a Mapbox GL JS web map using latitude and longitude coordinates.
Related resources: