i would implement a Map on my Homepage.
It should display a route from a fix start point to a variable end point.
We have a database (mysql) which contain adresses (Street and number).
And thats the only way to determine the two points
I have completely no idea how to do that.
is OSM (OpenStreetMap) a good way to do that? But how can i get coordinates from a adress ...
Yes, OpenStreetMap is one possible way of solving your task.
To embed a map based on OSM you should either stick to Leaflet or OpenLayers. Both offer slightly different features but are easy to use. And both can easily display a GPX file (your route) as an overlay on top of the map.
For calculating this route you can choose from one of the many online routers, offline routers or just stick to a library.
Similarly OSM offers a way to convert an address to coordinates. This is called geocoding and can be done using Nominatim.
Remember to check the usage policies if you decide to use any of the web services (routing, geocoding, tiles). For most of these services there are alternative instances available which are run by different companies and have less-strict usage policies. And of course you can also run your local instances of most of these services if you like.
Related
I'm working on a project where I need to display maps. These maps are going to have routes and points of interest, there will be many maps to display in the future. At this moment, the project operates with mysql. At first, I was thinking in keeping the points of interest and the points from the routes in a table in mysql server and display them with leaflet.js and OSM, but doing some research I found information about geoJson to store points and routes, and also i notice that leaflet can display information in geojson format.
I am a novice at Maps topic, so what do you recommended me?
To store points in mysql?
To have a database of geoJson files which store information about any map?
The project is about a Web application where the user will find detailed information about some routes, this information will be displayed in text format(html) and will be accompanied with a map (that will display the route and some points)
We (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aph.avigenie&hl=en) used a sqlite DB on the device to store favourites. We also store OSM (Open Street Maps) data in MySQL. Having the geospatial extensions is helpful; however, we don't use them, we have been able to find ways around having them.
A really useful answer would require some more insights about your application. For example, is your application somehow coupled with a webservice? Is your application itself a web service? In that case, should the various calculation be performed on client-side or server-side? Are you dealing with few POI and routes having not many waypoints? Or are you working on a planetary GIS?
Assuming you probably are somewhere between those last two extremes, you should definitively take a look at:
MySQL spatial extension
or preferably PostGIS
Those will allow you to store lots of data and to efficiently retrieve them.
BTW, remember the earth is not flat. So, storing point is one thing, but displaying them on a flat display will require to use some kind of projection. GeoJSON itself is only a file format. You will definitively require a tool than can handle that for you. That will be one key feature to check, I think.
I want to make a very clean map that only shows relevant information - e.g., only the streets that matter. I was going to just draw a map while looking at Google's, but that turned out to be very slow. Is there any way to make this easier, perhaps with some combination of mapping software and Google's API?
(If I should of put this on another SE site, please tell me)
Building upon Suvi's nice answer.
There is a very useful open-source project that collects street data for the entire globe. It's called OpenStreetMap. On their website you can extract the specific street data you need. It only takes a few clicks and bam! you got the map you need. Their data can also be accessed (perphaps easier for some) from here and here. Those links can provide you with the shapefile(map) that you need. Your newly aquired map can then be loaded in the free QGIS software that was mentioned. There you can easily select the streets you are interested in.
When you mean you want to only show "streets that matter", you are out of luck with using Google Maps. Because you have no control over the ROADMAP data that google provides. Now what you can do, is use another mapping software such as ArcGIS or Quantum GIS (which is free). Both these softwares allow you to load road data shapefiles, and you can query (select) which roads you want to display and customize the look of it to your liking.
If you want a quick approach (without having to download softwares), I believe ArcGIS has an online portal which allows you to display information you want on top of their base maps. You will still need the shapefile for your streets though. Check this link out, make yourself an account and experiment around with it http://www.arcgis.com/home/. If you click on the Map tab, it takes you to a screen which should allow you to upload shapefiles.
You said you were ' going to just draw a map'. If all you need is a very clean map, you can consider using iMap Builder which is a mapping software supports both map shape files, and custom Google maps. I have used to create some simple map projects before and worked great for me. You can use their pre-made map templates which shows just the map outlines without any details, you can then add routes / points / mouse-over speech bubbles etc as you need.
A local real estate agent is wanting to add Google maps to his web site that display his listings. However, rather than just showing map markers to all his properties, he wants the web site visitor to be able to draw an arbitrary polygon on the map, click a button, and then display all his houses within those bounds.
My understanding is that this is going to take some GIS voodoo. But before I start looking into the complexity of PostGIS, I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this? The site runs on a standard LAMP stack, but I'm hoping to convince him to move over to Python/Nginx/PostgreSQL.
I don't think there is a need to move to PostGIS.
First chances are that your client gets the list through an MLS database via an address (123 fooview street). Update that list into a kml file
Using Google maps tutorial or this map tool draw a polygon
using this website (js provided inside the maps) you can do the point in polygon(match if any of your addresses are within polygon boundaries). I think they do it in more than one application.
EDIT
another way of doing point-in-polygon in google maps
I don't think this is going to require as much GIS voodoo as you think. I would approach this in three steps:
Generate a latitude and longitude coordinate for each listing. You may already have this information in your database. If you don't, there are several free tools available to do this. We have programmed a Google maps application at work that links directly to our SQL backend infrastructure that I can help you set up in your application if needed.
Use GLatLng to return coordinates for the arbitrary points the respondent is interested in: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2/reference.html#GLatLng
Use some math to create an area of the points (will be easier if you only allow 4 points for the arbitrary shape) and then use a for loop to compare each listing's lat/long pair to the area.
If your area is too large to compare all listings to the arbitrary area, do some pre-filtering based on state/county/city/whatever data you have available.
Hope this helps,
-Chase
I want to create an application where users can mark on map location of polluting factories. Google map provides a MAP editor feature. We would like to have our own website like www.toxic-map.org where people could mark these locations. What would be the best approach for this?
Additionally we should be able to backup this database which could be cross checked or used for other purposes.
This will enable us to have little accurate census of such entities and thereby helping us in the fight against these environment harming, illegal factories. Most of our work is focused on developing countries of Asia.
Edited: Google maps is one of the options. I am open to other possible solutions as well. I am looking at something we could do quick prototyping in.
Thank you in advance!!
On the client side, I recommend you to have a look at OpenLayers, a free and open source web mapping framework released under a BSD-style License. It is completely written in Javascript and offers a lot of functionality, including the features that your application may need (Add markers to the map, drag them to adjust the locations, ...).
It also supports dozens of different geographic data formats and services such as WMS, KML or Google Maps.
If you are worried about licensing issues regarding the use of Google Maps, you can use other global data sources like OpenStreetMap or a public WMS if they provide enough coverage of your area of interest.
On the server side, I agree with the answer provided by Daniel Vassallo. I will just add a little detail and recommend you to serve the markers in a standard format natively supported by OpenLayers like KML, GeoJSON or GeoRSS. It will make really easy to draw the markers on the map.
Looks like a really interesting project, I hope you are lucky starting it up.
I seem to remember that there are restrictions to what you can do with the coordinates if you enter them through Google's interface, but if that doesn't bother you then sure, Google might be the way to go. (It may just pertain to geometrical figures entered into Google Earth or something like that.)
Google seems to be in line with your ideology anyway, as they're doing a lot of green power development. Might even be a selling point.
But if you can input the data separately and have Google Maps just display it for you then I wouldn't think they could hold claim to the data.
I think your best bet is to use the Google Maps API instead of the map editor in My Maps.
With some basic JavaScript, you will be able to allow users to drop markers on the polluted locations they would want to tag.
You will need a database on the server-side, and a thin application layer that:
Accepts and validates new markers added by users.
Serves the markers from the database to the browser.
You may want to use AJAX to interact between the browser and the application layer.
I think this type of project would be an excellent candidate to be hosted on the Google App Engine. You will be able to leverage on the simplicity of the webapp framework, and the Google Datastore appears to fit well.
As a side-note, you might be interested in checking out the Heat Map API for Google Maps. I think heat maps would look good in a project like this.
The approach is this:
1. User can drag the marker to the location of toxic factory.
2. A simple form opens to enter details of the toxic factory.
3. The latitude, logitude and other datails are then saved in database.
Please refer www.loppee.com They have a similar solution where user can mark the location of people or places of interest. Loppee uses LeafletJS javascript framework. It is a simple framework. You would be able to develop quick prototype. LeafletJS.com has simple and easy to use code samples.
Additionally, you can enable Geolocation and IP triangulation. Refer: Longitude and latitude value from IP address
I'm currently working on a project which maps items to a physical location within a building. We have a map created in our GIS system (ArcGIS), and are able to resolve items to the appropriate shape ID on this map.
We want to create a web map using one of the APIs such as Google maps or Open Layers in order to display this info, directing the user to the correct location on the map, and ideally highlighting the particular location (for example using a shaded polygon), or at least identifying it with some sort of marker.
However we're very new to all of the online mapping APIs, and are finding it pretty overwhelming at the moment. All we really want is a flat map with our own custom imagery - we dont really care about geo-referencing, or projections etc.
Does anyone have any tips or info about how we might go about this? Even just general pointers would be helpful - it's hard to know where to look when there's so much info out there!
Cheers
If you are using ArcGIS Server, use ArcCatalog to expose your data as a WMS.
If you do not have an ArcGIS Server license, you can use MapServer or GeoServer to do the same (i.e expose as a WMS).
OpenLayers has support for adding WMS layers. See their examples section for sample code.
Cheers
OpenLayers can handle your own custom imagery maps without any problems.
You can check out this example:
http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/image-layer.html
And of course you need to read the API documentation
If you are using ArcGIS to creat eyour map, then use ArcGIS Server to serve up the maps online. Then use ArcGIS JavaScript API to build your web application. There are several out-of-the-box templates as well as easy-to-use examples for performing basic actions such as pan, zoom, select, highlight, redlining, etc.
Create your map service, then add your custom Map as a Dynamic Map Service or a Tiled Map Service (if you've cached it). Perform a Find (or Query if you have more than one feature you want to highlight). Add the Graphic from the FindResult to your GraphicsLayer.
Here's a more complete example.
You could also look at MapGuide OS and (if you don't have studio) Maestro. It is a server side application that will take in SHP files from Arc easily. The only downside IMO is that the built in search and reporting functionality is rather limited but can be extended via the API (C#, PHP and Java) that and it is rather centralized with a persistent process on the server (which can make debugging exceedingly fun).
The fusion/flexible (or whatever they heck they call it) layouts are based on the OpenLayers API but is still relatively new. And you can publish as a WMS or WFS I believe (I haven't done it personally).
If using ArcGIS Server, you can also expose your imagery and feature layers via a REST endpoint that can be consumed by OpenLayers. Check out James Fee's blog post on the topic.