Question

<?
 $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM poi_example");
 while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)){
 $name=$row['name'];
 $lat=$row['lat'];
 $lon=$row['lon'];
 $desc=$row['desc'];
echo ("addMarker($lat, $lon,'<b>$name</b><br/>$desc');\n");
 }
?>

this code (echo) shows the table data in HTML source code.. is there another way (which does not shows the data) to extract markers from table?
thank you.

tutorial & demo page

Answer 1

I prefer to render them as a JSON. You can either do that in-page as you have done above.

<?php
// do database connection here
// run query to fetch your results
$rows = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query)) {
    $rows[] = $row;
}
echo "<script>var items = '".json_encode($rows)."';</script>";

You can iterate over your items array in JavaScript.

for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
    (function(item) {
        addMarker(item.lat, item.lon, '<b>' + item.name + '</b><br />' + item.desc);
    })(items[i]);
}

I presume your addMarker() function creates a standard Google Map marker.

Alternative, you can have a PHP script that fetches your items from the database as echoes them as a JSON string, and then just call that via AJAX with jQuery.

So your PHP script would simply be:

<?php
header('Content-Type: application/json');
// connect to database
// do query
$rows = array();
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($res)) {
    $rows[] = $row;
}
echo json_encode($rows);
exit;

And then in your JavaScript file:

$.getJSON('script.php', function(items) {
    for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
        (function(item) {
            addMarker(item.lat, item.lon, '<b>' + item.name + '</b><br />' + item.desc);
        })(items[i]);
    }
});

Hope this helps.