Comments on: Google Mapping in FileMaker

By: mike.lee

mike.lee — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:40:14 +0000

Hello everyone. I’m moving this over to the main Proof Group blog to continue this topic and discussion. I’ve made a lot of progress on the issues and look forward to sharing.

http://www.proofgroup.com/blog/2008/nov/google_mapping_redux

By: dennisburnham

dennisburnham — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:43:16 +0000

Mike,

I am confused by this because I don’t know enough about PHPor Java. I am trying to use the Google API to create a web viewer object that will give me point-to-point directions using addresses that are in my database. I can forego the map, if necessary, because of space limitations on my layout. But I need to learn how to formulate the calculation that calls the directions from Google Maps.

Any clues?

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:12:19 +0000

Prior to FM9, the Web Viewer could only display URLs (not HTML directly). That’s why I originally started looking at tools that could convert a structured URL (i.e. http://example/map.php?addr=ADDRESS) into a suitable page for Google Maps. I couldn’t create the HTML locally and display it locally without resorting to other tricks (plug-ins to save a file locally, etc.) And those other tricks would make it brittle and add to the general complexity of making it work (although that’s open for debate). I settled on PHP because I happened to find some tools to make the Google Mapping easier (the “Easy Google Map” PHP class) and I have the PHP knowledge to make it work. That said, there are downsides to a server-based approach, notably the URL length limits mentioned above which impedes the total number of addresses that can be mapped at once.

With FM9, you can use the “data: URI scheme” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data:_URI_scheme) to hand-build the HTML and display it directly in a Web Viewer. This seems on the surface to be a much better choice, because the data don’t have to be sent across the internet to another server just to be displayed.

Here’s a simplified example:
“data:text/html,Hello World!”

If you put that into a Web Viewer (>=FM9), it will show “Hello World!”. Fairly boring, but the HTML can be as complex as required to get the job done.

The last step would be to write a process by which the JavaScript-based page is created directly in FM. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader. I’d be interested if anyone out there gets a prototype working.

Cheers,
Mike

By: dburnham

dburnham — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:22:15 +0000

I would like to know if there is a solution to this same problem within FileMaker itself, without PHP serving anything. That is, how can I get the web viewer to simply display the full image of the map without the sidebar?

By: igpltcd

igpltcd — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 05:05:11 +0000

Nice post Mike

Have you tried FusionMaps Pro for FileMaker? This is a flash mapping component for FM solutions, it renders animated data-driven maps through Web Viewer. The tool comes with a FileMaker Script Library as well.

By: Mike Lee

Mike Lee — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:47:14 +0000

Could be a specific PHP variety or version difference.

Try enclosing the class name in parens:
require ('EasyGoogleMap.class.php');

If that doesn't work, try double quotes instead of single quotes.

By: David Head

David Head — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:15:38 +0000

I get an error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_CLASS in /clientdata/clients/u/l/ulearnit.com.au/www/googlemap/googlemap.php on line 35

Line 35 is:

require ‘EasyGoogleMap.class.php’;

Any ideas what could be wrong?

By: Andreas Andersson

Andreas Andersson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:23:04 +0000

Hi guys. I got it to work but not when the adress contains swedish charachters like å ä ö. I’ve tried with $charset = “iso-8859-1″; in both of the files but nothing works. Please help me.

By: KoenVanHulle

KoenVanHulle — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:59:54 +0000

To make it usefull in all kinds of layout, you could make the width and height dynamic by adding the width and height as an extra parameter:

http://etc.proofgroup.com/fmcollective/googlemap.php?addr=1600+Amphitheatre+Pkwy,+Mountain+View,+CA+94043&width=400&height=300

I did an implementation with Microsoft Virtual Earth. With Virtual Earth you don’t need a public domain.
More info: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/

Koen

By: Andy Warwick

Andy Warwick — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:16:08 +0000

It’s worth pointing out the terms of use for the Google Maps API found here:

http://www.google.com/apis/maps/index.html

and here:

http://www.google.com/enterprise/maps/faq.html

Basically, you are okay to use it in an open, free non-commercial product for nothing; if–on the other hand–you are using it in a commercial, intranet or non-public solution, there is a license fee of at least$10,000.

So be very careful if you are planning to use any of the above article’s information in a solution for a client, and make sure you read the Terms and Conditions of use very carefully.