Question

I am currently working on a project where users need to be able to enter geological data (such as a certain street name) into a website which will be put into a database and then retrieved and displayed on a Google map for all users to see.

I’ve done a little research and so far it looks like the best way to do this is to use a PHP script for getting data and sending it to a MySQL database where it can then be retrieved by another PHP script and then passed to JavaScript to display on the map.

From a big picture, the standpoint is this the best way to do things?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Looks like your problem has a few separate steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Maps API key.

2. Write something that lets the user input the address and save it in the database.
   2a. The same script should convert the address to a coordinate using Geocoding. The result should (must) be saved in the database as well since Google will only accept 15k Geocode queries per IP per day. Since you will be saving the results it would only be a problem if you are going to add more than 15k items to your map in one day.

3. Write the script that generates the map. There may be some cool Google API calls, if not you will have to do do some work yourself. Cache the map with a timestamp so you can save some processor/time.

4. Create an interface that will display the map, integrate with step 2a, and call step 3.