Are there any APIs that will provide the hours of operation for a business at a particular location? Google Places, SimpleGeo, and Yelp don't seem to expose it. If not, is there some dataset that exists (again, i couldn't find one on data.gov or anything) that i could use to create such an API?
29
votes
When you say "hours of operation for a business", do you mean 9AM to 5PM local time? As this answer points out, your question is a bit vague.
- Matt Passell
@Matt, I don't agree. As I commented on that answer, "particular location" seems to clearly mean "particular branch" or "particular storefront."
- Matthew Flaschen
@Matthew Oh, I see. It would be a bit clearer if the question were phrased as "the" (rather than "a") business at a particular location.
- Matt Passell
7 Answers
15
votes
The feature request to the Google Places API mentioned by Mihai Danila has been since fulfilled.
Opening hours are now returned in Place Details results where available: https://developers.google.com/places/documentation/details#PlaceDetailsResults https://developers.google.com/places/documentation/details#PlaceDetailsResponses
Place Search results also now include a property that indicates if a business is currently open.
3
votes
You may want to contact DNB and see if they have an offering since they are the prime source of business information: http://www.dnb.com
Just because they do not offer it as a product publicly does not mean that they cannot build a service to provide what you need.
2
votes
Using YQL and JSONP you could gather the data yourself if the API doesn't exist yet.
http://paul.donnelly.org/2009/07/08/yql-and-jsonp-x/
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/guide/yql-code-examples.html#sdk_yql
2
votes
The Yelp and Facebook API's will often list opening times for local businesses. A company can put it on their page. But its kinda luck of the draw as to wheter or not the times are there.
Check out graph.facebook.com www.facebook.com/developers and http://www.yelp.com/developers/documentation
0
votes
I'm currently investigating Simple Geo's support for annotations as a way to add this info to their Places API. It makes it DIY, but the docs talk about public annotations so maybe operating hours can be crowd sourced.
I'll follow up as I learn more.
0
votes
Do you have any news on this thread?
I stumbled upon hoursmap.com trying to solve this, and even e-mailed them, but no response so far.
A scraper may be the best we can do, at least until features requiring business hours find more momentum.
As far as the need to handle siesta times, I believe you can handle this, worst case by writing something like "open between 9-12 and 14-18 on each weekday." I don't think that's a show stopper by any means.
Perhaps Yahoo! Pipes with some scraping is the way to go.
Please let us know if you've been able to make progress.
-1
votes
hat will provide the hours of operation for a business at a particular location
Are you sure business hours are standardized at least in one country? In Russia we have plenty of varieties. My primary bank works from 09-00 till 20-00. Another one near to my work closes at 19. The shop I buy food from is 24h, another one also with food closes at 22-00.
I don't think you can have an API like that.
