Question

I’m currently working on a web-project where we need to be able to get accurate addresses for activities that the users create. So my idea here was to implement a autocomplete city and address search field without using a map.(much like the one facebook has when creating arrangements) As the user type, he gets suggestions… This would then be used to let user find activities based on distance from a location specified in the same manner. (This probably means I need coordinates for the addresses/cities)

I’m just wondering if there’s any free frameworks out there that will let me do this?

Answer 1

Since you want to use that information go actually get distances, (not just the autocomplete,) what you’re probably looking for is a “Geocoding” API. That is something which takes addresses and turns them into coordinates. Probably the most famous one out there is the Google Maps one. There’s some detailed information on the JavaScript version here:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2/services.html

There’s an jquery component which hooks into that API, which would probably make things even easier for you (disclaimer: I haven’t actually used this library, I just found it). You can get it from here:
http://code.google.com/p/geo-autocomplete/