Question

So i checked out all the relating posts. I was wondering, which i have yet to be able to find with about 20 google searches and about 45 website visits, if it is possible, based on users information that i could load a google map to display the users desired location.

Your probably asking, “Give me more details, that could mean anything!”

Your right, it could. So say i have a user that gives me (i got it from the database)

var stuffIGotFromMyWebServerWithPHPandMySQL = {
myComment: "Hey Everyone, party at my place!",
country: "US",
state: "MT",
city: "Bozeman",
address: "Emerson Cultural Center"
};


Now that i have the information of what city/state/country the event is in, and the name of a place, The Emerson is a real place in bozeman that google maps will recognize, is there a way to load a map with a marker at that location? I have the latitude/longitude for bozeman, MT, but i do not have such information about the Emerson. Is there a way i could provide the just the words, and have it bring up the place with a marker, on a static, no user interaction allowed map?

and i would probably want to load it through js

Thanks,

Michael B Paulson

Answer 1

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script>
<script>
  var marker;

  function initialize() {
    var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();
    geocoder.geocode(
      {
        'address': 'Emerson Cultural Center, Bozeman, MT'
      },
      function(results, status) {
        if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
          var myOptions = {
            zoom: 6,
            center: results[0].geometry.location,
            mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
          }
          var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), myOptions);

          marker = new google.maps.Marker({
            map:map,
            draggable:false,
            animation: google.maps.Animation.BOUNCE,
            position: results[0].geometry.location
          });
        }
      }
    );
  }
</script>
<div id="map_canvas" style="height:300px;width:300px"></div>

try this code and see if helps, you can use the Geocoder fro the google maps api to convert text to latlang.

you can see the following example from the documentation here http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/geocoding-simple.html