I have a requirement and I am hoping Google Maps API will have a solution. I have never used Google Maps API – so I am very new to this.
On the website homepage there is a form, when a user comes, I want the following things to happen:
1) The city field should be populated with users city based on IP
2) There is a second field called store name – when the user starts typing the store name – I want to fetch all business listings with that name in that city and show it as a drop down from which the user can select the appropriate branch. There is no need for anything to be shown on the map.
Egs – If a user in houston starts typing McDonalds, the following business listings should start showing up
- McDonalds, 12 Pearland Ave, Houston TX
- McDonalds, 2600 Bary Area Blvd, Houston TX
- McDonalds, 262 Clearlake Blvd, Houston TX
Also when we get the address for a business listing from Google API – do we get it as one String and we need to parse it or do we get it different fields Street Name, City, State, Zip code etc
Any information or examples will be really appreciated
Thanks
I don’t think you want Google Maps. First of all the terms of use do not allow any use other than displaying things on a Google Map on a publicly accessible webpage, second, there is another Google API that does exactly what you need: the Client location API: http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocation
Concerning the “businesses”: You’re going to have to source that data from somewhere – I do not believe google has a service for that. Perhaps you could simply use the Google Search API and some logic to find only businesses (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/)
EDIT: I for the businesses, perhaps you could take a look at this sample: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/samples.html#local-search