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I want to download a list of all countries on this planet from OSM. Also, for selected countries, I would like to have states and cities.
How can this easily be achieved? There must be an easier way that to download the whole planet and iterate through all nodes, ways and relation, checking for each whether it maches my criteria, I hope...
Overpass API allows you to download only selected objects. For country borders, admin_level=2 should return the information you want:
<osm-script>
<query type="relation">
<has-kv k="admin_level" v="2"/>
</query>
<print mode="meta"/>
</osm-script>
This returns 302 border relations without all coordinates.
States and cities have higher admin levels according to the local administrative hierarchy.
Alternatively, you can query for nodes with place=country:
<osm-script>
<query type="node">
<has-kv k="place" v="country"/>
</query>
<print mode="meta"/>
</osm-script>
This returns 226 countries represented by a single point in the middle, including the coordinates.
place=country as you can see in my extended answer.
– AndreJ
Apr 2 '14 at 15:29
