Pulling countries from a database, using leaflet to give them coordinates - leaflet

Question

I am currently working on a program that pulls countries and coordinates from a database. I am pinning them on a map after gathering them. I am having no trouble when receiving both the coordinates and the country but when the coordinates aren't available I can't pin on the map just based on the country. I was hoping there was a leaflet method that would allow me to geolocate solely based on a country that would pin in the middle of the country.
Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

There is no core Leaflet method for doing this. However, there are some (3rd-party) Leaflet geocoding plugins that might do the trick. Take at look here: http://leafletjs.com/plugins.html#geocoding. Specifically, there is a geonames plugin that looks especially promising: https://github.com/consbio/Leaflet.Geonames.
Leaflet or not, this should be fairly easy to accomplish using a simple RESTful API call. Here's a Plunker where this is done: https://plnkr.co/edit/B2OF0D1nlBuNW6r2rqVL
Below is the operative section:
$( document ).ready(
function() {
// Get the latlng from rest countries
getCountryLocation = function() {
$('#country').html( $('#country_input').val() );
$.ajax(
{
url: "https://restcountries.eu/rest/v2/name/" + $('#country_input').val() + "?fullText=true",
success: function( result ) {
var latlng = result[0].latlng;
$("#latlng").html( latlng[0] + ", " + latlng[1] );
}
}
);
}
// Do the inital setup
getCountryLocation();
$('#go').click(
getCountryLocation
);
}
);