Question

I would like my content (let’s say messages) to have a geographical location connected to them – a column storing the geocode or the address in the database – and then use that geocode to display them onto a google map.
Do I need an abstraction library for that, or could I do it directly with the Google Maps API?
What would be a best practice in terms of performance and simplicity? (it’s already unknown territory for me)

Answer 1

I would start by looking at these libraries and bundles.

https://github.com/willdurand/Geocoder

https://github.com/egeloen/IvoryGoogleMapBundle

You can certainly store/query huge amounts of data in any standard database, but you may want to play with MongoDB for it’s geospacial indexes:

http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/geospatial-indexes/