Hi everyone!
Im working on a google map project where the user can type in a address and gets the result of nearby restaurants ploted on a google map.
So far no problems. I’ve created a ajax call where the backend outputs and xml and then with jquery I create the markers.
But now to my problem.
With this ajax solution anyone can easily with firebug or other webdeveloper tool access the xml result that contains all names, latitudes, longitudes of the restaurant I have.
I want to somehow protect the data that is showed.
How can I do this?
How can I plot google map markers with php without jquery? Can it be done?
thx in advance!
Simple answer – you can’t.
Long answer
You could draw an image overlay on server-side, kinda like Wikipedia overlay in Google maps, but I don’t think it’s worth the effort.
You could also store a key in php session and pass it to JavaScript on initial page load and then don’t return the data if data isn’t requested trough Ajax with the correct key (which is unique per browser session). This would just protect you from simple bots which don’t support cookies. More mess then gain.
Also remember that if someone were to write competing site using your server as data-source then they would still have to tunnel Ajax requests trough their own server because you can’t do cross-domain requests with JavaScript therefore you would see a lot requests from same IP (their web-server) in your web-logs and you could easily ban that IP. (Unless they download all at once and then serve from their own server).
And is it really necessary? It’s not like restaurant locations are top secret.