GeolocationCoordinates.longitude

Secure context
This feature is available only in secure contexts (HTTPS), in some or all supporting browsers.

The GeolocationCoordinates interface's read-only longitude property is a double-precision floating point value which represents the longitude of a geographical position, specified in decimal degrees. Together with a DOMTimeStamp indicating a time of measurement, the GeolocationCoordinates object is part of the GeolocationPosition interface, which is the object type returned by Geolocation API functions that obtain and return a geographical position.

Syntax

let longitude = geolocationCoordinatesInstance.longitude

Value

The value in longitude is the geographical longitude of the location on Earth described by the Coordinates object, in decimal degrees. The value is defined by the World Geodetic System 1984 specification (WGS 84).

Note: The zero meridian (also known as the prime meridian or the reference meridian) is not precisely the same as the Greenwhich meridian that most people think of. It is, instead, the IERS Reference Meridian, which is located 5.3 arcseconds (102 meters / 335 feet) east of the Greenwich meridian. This is the same standard used by the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Examples

In this simple example, we fetch the user's location and display the resulting coordinates once they're returned.

JavaScript

The JavaScript code below creates an event listener so that when the user clicks on a button, the location information is retrieved and displayed.

let button = document.getElementById("get-location");
let latText = document.getElementById("latitude");
let longText = document.getElementById("longitude");

button.addEventListener("click", function() {
  navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
    let lat = position.coords.latitude;
    let long = position.coords.longitude;

    latText.innerText = lat.toFixed(2);
    longText.innerText = long.toFixed(2);
  });
});

After setting up variables to more conveniently reference the button element and the two elements into which the latitude and logitude will be drawn, the event listener is established by calling addEventListener() on the <button> element. When the user clicks the button, we'll fetch and display the location information.

Upon receiving a click event, we call getCurrentPosition() to request the device's current position. This is an asynchronous request, so we provide a callback which receives as in put a GeolocationPosition object describing the determined position.

From the GeolocationPosition object, we obtain the user's latitude and longitude using position.coords.latitude and position.coords.longitude so we can update the displayed coordinates. The two <span> elements are updated to display the corresponding values after being converted to a value with two decimal places.

HTML

The HTML used to present the results looks like this:

<p>
  Your location is <span id="latitude">0.00</span>°
  latitude by <span id="longitude">0.00</span>° longitude.
</p>
<button id="get-location">
  Get My Location
</button>

Result

Take this example for a test drive here:

Specifications

Specification Status Comment
Geolocation API
The definition of 'Coordinates.longitude' in that specification.
Recommendation Initial specification.

Browser compatibility

DesktopMobile
ChromeEdgeFirefoxInternet ExplorerOperaSafariAndroid webviewChrome for AndroidFirefox for AndroidOpera for AndroidSafari on iOSSamsung Internet
longitudeChrome Full support 5Edge Full support 12Firefox Full support 3.5IE Full support 9Opera Full support 16
Full support 16
No support 10.6 — 15
Safari Full support 5WebView Android Full support 37Chrome Android Full support 18Firefox Android Full support 4Opera Android Full support 16
Full support 16
No support 11 — 14
Safari iOS ? Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0

Legend

Full support
Full support
Compatibility unknown
Compatibility unknown

See also