[pmwiki-users] GoogleMap question

Ben Wilson dausha at gmail.com
Tue Jun 20 15:15:20 CDT 2006


On 6/20/06, David Spitzley <dspitzle at wash.k12.mi.us> wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out how to make use of the GoogleMap recipe.  It sounds cool, but I'm unclear on whether latitude/longitude values are required, or whether you can use the street address to set the points on the map.  Can somebody give me some hints?

As the author of the recipe, I'll take a stab.

The short answer is you should use lat/lon values, in decimal format
(e.g. convert 36d 24' 36" to 36.3355 or what have you).

I've added the ability to show location by U.S. ZIP Code, but this is
a fairly inspecific method as it (should) position itself at the
center of the ZIP Code region, as provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

I believe being able to use your street address to point to the house
would require access to quite a hearty amount of data.[1] However, if
you look in the Google Map API file, it should point you to a URL that
allows you to type in your address and return the lat/lon value.[2] I
hope I've helped.[3]

-- 
Ben Wilson
"Democracy: two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."

[1]: The file for the lat/lon of major world cities is 700 MB
uncompressed, although I may be able to pare that down to something
more manageable in the future.
[2]: geocoder.us
[3]: This footnote provided for the heck of it.




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