Question

I currently have a Google map that geocodes multiple markers on the fly but found it was quickly hitting the geocode limit.

As an initial work around I set a time delay between each geocode request. This proved inadequate as you have to wait X amount of seconds/minutes for it to geocode each marker, meaning the markers aren’t plotted instantly.

I then tried Google Fusion Tables which plotted all the markers instantly but proved difficult in working with real time data. There seems no way for it to work with my WordPress database so it’s grabbing the real time data. (or atleast I can’t find any examples that it does).

What are the other alternatives to avoiding the geocode limit? Can anyone point me in the right direction.

My requirements are:

1. Markers need to be plotted instantly (or at least with minimum waiting time).
2. Needs to work with my WordPress data.
3. Data needs to be real-time i.e when something is edited/updated in WordPress the change needs to filter through to the map data.
4. Data from WordPress needs to be obfuscated or at least difficult to get hold of.

Answer 1

Without knowing more about what you’re geocoding, and why, have you considered caching the results on your server? If you’re making many requests for the same address, it doesn’t make sense to waste the API calls over and over again.

You would have to set up a PHP script as a proxy, look up the address in a cache table in your database, and if it exists, return the value from the DB. If it doesn’t exists, make the API call, store the results in your DB, then return the geocoded information.

If each request is for a different address, and you hardly ever geocode the same address more than once, then this isn’t the solution for you.