Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to Professional

Until recently, building interactive web-based mapping applications has been a cumbersome affair. This changed when Google released its powerful Maps API. Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax was written to help you take advantage of this technology in your own endeavorswhether you re an enthusiast playing for fun or a professional building for profit. This book covers version 2 of the API, including Google s new Geocoding service.

Authors -->Jeffrey Sambells-->, -->Cameron Turner-->, and -->Michael Purvis--> get rolling with examples that require hardly any code at all, but you ll quickly become acquainted with many facets of the Maps API. They demonstrate powerful methods for simultaneously plotting large data sets, creating your own map overlays, and harvesting and geocoding sets of addresses. You ll see how to set up alternative tile sets and where to access imagery to use for them. The authors even show you how to build your own geocoder from scratch, for those high-volume batch jobs.

As well as providing hands-on examples of real mapping projects, this book supplies a complete reference for the Maps API, along with the relevant aspects of JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Visit the -->authors' website for additional tips and advice.

After Google Maps was released in 2005, some users discovered that by using unofficial "hacks," the free online mapping service could be manipulated to create custom applications. For example, the Global Sightseeing website allows visitors to suggest natural and manmade landmarks to be noted on the satellite map. With the release of the Google Maps API, the company offers everyman the tools to create their own mapping applications using JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Purvis et al. offer a primer in the new software, taking the reader from the simplest, non-code tasks to advanced geocoding techniques. Appendices explain the methods, classes, constants, and objects available through the Google Maps API as of version 2.58.
Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

After Google Maps was released in 2005, some users discovered that by using unofficial "hacks," the free online mapping service could be manipulated to create custom applications. For example, the Global Sightseeing website allows visitors to suggest natural and manmade landmarks to be noted on the satellite map. With the release of the Google Maps API, the company offers everyman the tools to create their own mapping applications using JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Purvis et al. offer a primer in the new software, taking the reader from the simplest, non-code tasks to advanced geocoding techniques. Appendices explain the methods, classes, constants, and objects available through the Google Maps API as of version 2.58. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Until recently, building interactive Web-based mapping applications has been a cumbersome affair. This changed when Google released its powerful Maps API. This handbook was written to help readers take advantage of this technology in their own endeavors--whether they're enthusiasts playing for fun or professionals building for profit.

The Google Maps API remains one of the showcase examples of the Web 2.0 development paradigm, making it fairly trivial for third-party developers to incorporate dynamic mapping services into Web applications. In fact, interest in the Google service is so strong that it arguably sparked the mashup phenomenon, along with a number of websites such as http://www.gmapsmania.com intended to highlight some of the exciting applications developers are building using the mapping API.
Google Maps Application Development is the first book to comprehensively introduce the service from a developer-perspective, showing readers how they can integrate mapping features into their Web applications.
Proceeding far beyond creating a simplistic map display, readers are shown how to draw upon a variety of data sources such as geocode.us and the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER/Line data to build comprehensive geocoding services for mapping any location in North America.
Readers are also guided through various examples demonstrating how to encourage user interaction such as pinpointing map locations, adding comments, and building community-driven maps.

As well as providing hands-on examples of real mapping projects, this book supplies a complete reference for the Maps API, along with the relevant aspects of JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and SQL. Visit the authors' website for additional tips and advice.

Introduction.- Introducing Google Maps.- Getting Started.- Listening to the User.- Geocoding Addresses.- Advanced Geocoding.- Finding Interesting Things to Do.- Sanding the Corners.- Hacking Further.- Useful Algebra.- Future Considerations.- Appendix A: Google Maps API Reference.- Appendix B: Online Data Sources Reference.