Question

I made a Google Map with API v3 with this tutorial.

The .php is pulling results from the DB as you can see here.

But when applied to with the google map searching comes back with no results as you can see here.

The .html file isn’t pulling the markers from the DB when searching for a location. Ive been over the code 100 times and looked for answers across the net on where I went wrong.
If someone could bring some light to this issue it would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the .php

<?php  
require("phpsqlsearch_dbinfo.php");

// Get parameters from URL
$center_lat = $_GET["lat"];
$center_lng = $_GET["lng"];
$radius = $_GET["radius"];

// Start XML file, create parent node
$dom = new DOMDocument("1.0");
$node = $dom->createElement("markers");
$parnode = $dom->appendChild($node);

// Opens a connection to a mySQL server
$connection=mysql_connect (localhost, $username, $password);
if (!$connection) {
  die("Not connected : " . mysql_error());
}

// Set the active mySQL database
$db_selected = mysql_select_db($database, $connection);
if (!$db_selected) {
  die ("Can\'t use db : " . mysql_error());
}

// Search the rows in the markers table
$query = sprintf("SELECT address, name, lat, lng, ( 3959 * acos( cos( radians('%s') ) * cos( radians( lat ) ) * cos( radians( lng ) - radians('%s') ) + sin( radians('%s') ) * sin( radians( lat ) ) ) ) AS distance FROM markers HAVING distance < '%s' ORDER BY distance LIMIT 0 , 20",
  mysql_real_escape_string($center_lat),
  mysql_real_escape_string($center_lng),
  mysql_real_escape_string($center_lat),
  mysql_real_escape_string($radius));
$result = mysql_query($query);

if (!$result) {
  die("Invalid query: " . mysql_error());
}

// Iterate through the rows, adding XML nodes for each
while ($row = @mysql_fetch_assoc($result)){
  $node = $dom->createElement("marker");
  $newnode = $parnode->appendChild($node);
  $newnode->setAttribute("name", $row['name']);
  $newnode->setAttribute("address", $row['address']);
  $newnode->setAttribute("lat", $row['lat']);
  $newnode->setAttribute("lng", $row['lng']);
  $newnode->setAttribute("distance", $row['distance']);
}

echo $dom->saveXML();
?>

This is what the XML is putting out when I search Houston, TX in a 25 mile radius.

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
<markers><marker name="US Healthworks" address="9200 Hempstead, Houston, TX" lat="29.794104" lng="-95.449448" distance="5.34265857252369"/><marker name="Concentra Urgent Care" address="1000 N Post Oak, Houston, TX" lat="29.785303" lng="-95.456039" distance="5.47896700195167"/><marker name="US Healthworks" address="1414 S. Loop West, Houston, TX" lat="29.680426" lng="-95.399132" distance="5.79347704035615"/><marker name="Concentra Urgent Care" address="8799 North Loop E., Houston, TX" lat="29.797531" lng="-95.273872" distance="6.28265385500935"/><marker name="Doctor's Clinic Houston" address="6535 Southwest Freeway, Houston, TX" lat="29.717321" lng="-95.497299" distance="8.22610378379106"/><marker name="Northshore Occupational Medica" address="1140 Westmont Ste. 505, Houston, TX" lat="29.771984" lng="-95.195290" distance="10.4743938030692"/><marker name="US Healthworks" address="16630 Imperial, Houston, TX" lat="29.941263" lng="-95.396309" distance="12.615115596934"/><marker name="NOVA" address="6630 Roxburgh Drive, Houston, TX" lat="29.866304" lng="-95.555901" distance="13.371308778454"/><marker name="Fishbone Safety" address="208 X Street, Deer Park, TX" lat="29.694548" lng="-95.122627" distance="15.4859102039821"/><marker name="US Healthworks" address="17410 N.W. Freeway, Houston, TX" lat="29.888929" lng="-95.582146" distance="15.5495324355371"/><marker name="US Healthworks" address="10521 Corporate, Stafford, TX" lat="29.632973" lng="-95.596115" distance="16.2008784561048"/><marker name="Occupational Healthcare" address="610 S. Main Street, Highlands, TX" lat="29.808447" lng="-95.056885" distance="19.0351671183224"/><marker name="Medical Plaza Mobile Surveillance" address="10910 Spencer, La Porte, TX" lat="29.632973" lng="-95.062325" distance="20.4197847454651"/><marker name="US Healthworks" address="1309 West Fairmont Pkwy, LaPorte, TX" lat="29.651571" lng="-95.030998" distance="21.6516577038734"/></markers>

Answer 1

The XML document returned by your PHP script is not well-formed, as it contained a space character before the XML declaration in the first line:

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
^
|-- This space character in front of the declaration is causing the problem.

This caused the XML parser to fail with an error: XML declaration allowed only at the start of the document.

It could have come from whitespaces (including empty lines) around the PHP tags <?php and ?>.

Debug the xml variable after line 65 in collection.html to see the problem. I believe you can fix this by removing all whitespaces before the XML declaration. [Reference]

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On the other hand, the reason why the map is panned to the middle of the ocean is because when no markers are added to the map, the bounds to which the map is fitted is not extended at all — i.e. bounds.extend(latlng) on line 78 is not reached.

I suggest modifying the searchLocationsNear() function to gracefully handle this situation.

---

UPDATE:

In the comments below, we discussed ways to overcome the issue with whitespaces in the XML output. I want to emphasize that the best solution is still to get rid of the space at the source, which is in the PHP script.

The trim() function in JavaScript does not have widespread browser support (see related SO question), and is really addressing only the symptoms but not the cause of the problem.