Question

All the “simple examples” of geocoding load a hard-coded long/lat pair and then, after the map is displayed, they load the arbitrary user-supplied address. Unfortunately for me, this means the hard-coded location always appears first and then the map shifts to the user-supplied address. What I’d like to find out is how to geocode an arbitrary address first, then initialize the map to the location in one step, so that when the map appears on the screen it is already showing the correct location.

I’ve been unable to deduce how this could be done from the API docs, however. All the examples show “new google.maps.Map()” being called prior to geocoding and it appears you have to already have a location to create the map, so it’s impossible to geocode before displaying the map. On the other hand, it seems to me this would be the most common way to use a google map, so surely there’s some way to do it?

Is this possible and does anyone have an example they could point to? Thanks!

Answer 1

If I understood you correctly, I created a simple page here

http://jsfiddle.net/4QGKq/1/

1. There’s a hardcoded human readable address in the HTML (“Sardegna”)
2. The geocoder figures out LatLng from Sardegna
3. Map is created and centered there.

To change the default map center, change the address in the Source HTML panel, not the textbox, then click on the blue “Run” button.