I've embedded a map on a clients site, with their various store locations, using the google saved maps technique: http://passportal.com.au/stockists So basically I don't want store the marker locations in a database, I'm just interested in using the marker positions on the saved map as seen in this demo: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/getmaps/plot-multi.html
I've seen it on plenty of sites and am wondering if there is an easy way to add a search field to find the closest marker to the users address. Something like this: http://www.victoriantextiles.com.au/store-locator
The closest I could find was a google gadget that allows you to type in directions: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&hl=en&gl=en&url=http://igwidgets.com/lig/gw/f/islk/89/slkm/ik/s/1329844/87/charles447/google-maps-driving-directions.xml
Any help would be great, thanks!
For this purpose, I use Google Maps API Distance Matrix where I would pass in one origin - user's location and multiple destinations - our dealers. Then I sort the results by distance and take 3 closest to display in a list. Works pretty fast, however, I don't know how you'd achieve this without having some sort of database of your store addresses.
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My application should allow users to store events and their locations and then perform search on them - so I need those locations in my database with their names and latitudes/longitudes. Google API doesnt allow storing anything else but place IDs so I have to find something else that can autocomplete/suggest places on UI and allow storing it my database.
Does anyone know such a good service?
You can simply add your points in your DB based on each point Lat & Long values. So when user is searching somewhere you have his current location(Lat-Long), Therefore you can search in your DB and get the distance of each saved point with current location and retrieve the results you want to show (i.e in JSON format).
In client-side use some auto-complete jquery library to show the nearby places and somethings like that (with additional information).
Google Map API has a service that you can show some custom marker on the map with your custom configuration like marker icon, description and etc. You can show your additional information in description as HTML format.
You can see some example here:
Customizing a Google Map: Custom Markers
Hope these tips would be helpfull. Regards.
Suddenly I've found an answer that helps me:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/hNc1OOU6Zm8
So I can use some Google's data under some conditions.
I've been developing a website where users can add a place (say a store in a city) and it is stored in a database. Now I would like to be able to display these places on a interactive map on my website. I got a bing maps developer key but it seems i can only display the data if i have the coordinates (lon/lat). Is that true? And if so, how do I get the coordinates automatically once a user adds new data?
As an example: You add Store XYZ in City XYZ, but you DON'T have to enter the coordinates. Now, this info is stored, but I don't have the coordinates..
Any help is much appreciated!
If you don't have any plans on allowing your users to insert place locations in a map or by filling some lat/long data, I suggest you to use google web services to get geolocation of those places. You'll need to format the input you send into something like an address to get it working properly though.
See this Google documentation
thats my scenario: I want to load a list of places of interest of a user based on his location (using HTML5 geolocation). But the problem is, I have a very big list of places (I don't want to have to load all places from my database), so the solution I have adopted until now is only to call mysql for the results in a given radius from the user, let's say, 1 km. But I'd like when user is dragging google maps to explore the map, load progressively the places for the area is shown on the map (basically something similar to what foursquare does).
Is there any simple way to achieve that? Hope I was clear with the question, thanks in advance, any help is appreciated.
Jesús.
General approach:
get the bounds of the map and query your data base for markers that are currently in view
optional, add padding to the bounds so some markers are available just out of view if the map is dragged
display the resulting markers
when the map is moved (bounds_changed event), query your database for additional markers
process through the returned markers, only adding those that are new (requires an array of existing markers and a way to determine that the existing marker and a newly downloaded marker are the same)
Searching the Google Maps API v3 group (and the Google Maps API v2 group, the concepts will apply but the code samples may not) should give you some examples.
I'm developing a app that makes use of the Gmaps Places library and actually, I have two questions:
1) Does anyone know how long it takes to an added place(by POST request) to show up on the map? I only need it on the app's map, so I don't care if Google doesn't approve it. I've already sent the add request and received OK as response.
2) It is possible to search for markers, placed by me, as if they were places(and using radius)? Not necessarily using the Places library. I ask this to see if is possible to come with a backup plan if the waiting mentioned above is long(clients, clients...). Then I would have the places 'offline from Gmaps', mapped inside a JSON file.
If I understand you correctly, you want to combine Google's Places API with a custom location set? Without more detail I can't really tell you what the code would look like, but you'd basically want to mash up the results you get from places with your own data and place markers based on that merge. If you're searching by radius or polygon you can do a 'within bounds' search on your dataset and return any results that are within the search zone to feed into your marker creator.
All the methods and examples I can find about the Google maps api is based on a postcode, or coordinates to get the desired location - what if I want to place a marker for a specific business which has been added to google maps, so it shows tel number etc like an embeded map would? Even if I use exact coordinates for the address it doesn't recognise it. Sure I'm missing something really simple here...
Thanks!
The Google Places API, this does what your looking for. I couldn't tell you how to implement as of now because i am trying to put it inside of my Rails application but i will update my answer in the future when i do get it working though.