Question

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.

Answer 1

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