{"id":69,"date":"2006-11-29T22:33:35","date_gmt":"2006-11-29T22:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2006-11-30T00:44:55","modified_gmt":"2006-11-30T00:44:55","slug":"google-maps-mash-ups-are-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"Google Maps mash-ups are easy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A colleague from dare2<\/a>, a youth development charity based in Woking, asked where the nearest IBM location to him was. I didn’t know.<\/p>\n

The IBM UK website gives a list of UK locations<\/a>. But there are two small problems. One – my geography is so bad that I don’t know where Woking actually is. Two – my geography is so bad that I don’t know where each of the IBM locations on the IBM list are. Okay, it’s really one reason, but it’s embarrassing enough that it’s worth mentioning twice \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So, I thought this would be a good enough excuse to try creating my first Google Maps mash-up.<\/p>\n

I’ve been meaning to try the Google Maps API for ages, but never realy got around to it. I’d heard that it was easy, but I didn’t realise just how easy. If you just want a map with a few points marked on it, it only takes a few minutes. <\/p>\n

\"screenshot\"<\/a>To see my map of IBM UK locations, take a look here<\/a>. I wont bother copying the source code here – it is short and simple enough that it doesn’t really need any explanation, and if you want to see it you can view the source for the webpage. <\/p>\n

The only frustrating bit was when I tried adding some search capabilities to the map. See http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/maps\/search.html<\/a> to see how far I got. What I wanted was a box that I could enter ‘Woking’ into, then hit Submit to get it added to the map – ideally in a different colour – so I could see where Woking is in relation to the IBM locations. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Google Maps Geocoder (the bit that should convert ‘Woking’ into map coordinates) doesn’t seem to like UK place names. Try it<\/a> – enter UK place names and nothing. Enter a US place name, for example ‘New York’, and you get coordinates. <\/p>\n

Apparently, this is intentional – some problem with Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail holding the copyright to the database<\/a> needed to do the conversion. I could look into using another source for the conversion but this has already long since passed the point of being an over-engineered solution to a fairly trivial problem, so I think I might leave it there for tonight. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Oh – and if you’re curious what the answer was? It’s IBM Weybridge<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A colleague from dare2, a youth development charity based in Woking, asked where the nearest IBM location to him was. I didn’t know. The IBM UK website gives a list of UK locations. But there are two small problems. One – my geography is so bad that I don’t know where Woking actually is. Two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}