Forums > Technical Discussion > Events database + Google maps = cool :)

Posted: 19 years ago
Would a frapper map do the trick?

I don't know if it does events, but it might be cool for Hoppers anyway...

If you want any help with the scripting let me know, I work with AJAX all the time...

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
I'd not seen Frappr before.. HoP ought to have a page there either way. I'm not sure it'll quite work for events though



Cheers for the offer - might take you up on that. Do you have msn (messenger) per chance?

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
Are you thinking about setting up a new events database or somehow tapping in to HoPs? It'd be great if Malcolm could make an RSS feed of the events and then anyone could parse the feed in to whatever.

I would like to be able to take the data and convert it in to an iCal file for subscribing to from desktop calendar, so I have all the events synced to my phone - but thats maybe a bit too geeky!

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
Nice

I had a similar idea over on Spherculism, though without the technical wizardry you have at your disposal- we planned on using a member location map so you could see who was nearby and get basic contact details etc- similar... wel sort of

Posted: 19 years ago
He sounded keen on hosting it, and has already installed the Google maps API on HoP. I see no reason not to provide an RSS feed from it

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
well, an RSS feed would open up the database to more use from feed readers updating (sometimes once a minute), but a cashe would sort that out...

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
What version of RSS should I output? A quick google suggests there are many?

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
2.0 I would say, but you'd be best making more than one - like atom as well

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
Alright, I've not tried building a CSS feed before, but I've got a couple of bits of the web so I think I've got an idea of what I need now. I'll start with RSS 2.0...

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
A CSS feed? huh?

What are you working on? Do you have a mock database there? Are you using PHP? Platform?

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
Oops, typo - I meant RSS. I'm in the process of putting together a mock database (mySQL) to store the events. There'll be a php page to read it's contents and produce the feed(s). There'll be another page which will have the map, event list etc.



My server here is a Debian box running Apache 2 with php and mySQL modules if that's what you meant by platform?
EDITED_BY: *HyperLight (1141405858)

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
On https://www.soton-firespinning.co.uk/
is the similar plane from authors called "Soton Fire Spinning Members Map" Its very good idea. You can contact them and put it together.

light,

:R

POI THEO(R)IST

Posted: 19 years ago
Could this be used as a map link button on the top of the threads on HoP in the events section? That way people could just click on the button to see exactly where the meet was.

Feed me Chocolate!!! Feed me NOW!

Posted: 19 years ago
I was thinking it might (almost) replace the events section. Obviously you need the msg boards to discuss things, but it'd be easier to browse events if you could quickly sort them in time order, location, etc.

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
Thinking about it, I don't know if RSS is the best format. If you read the RSS spec you'll see that the fields arn't really very good for events. Why not use the iCalendar format (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar) and get the google maps bit to read from that...


We could add other feeds in as well, IE if soton opened it's events database up over iCal we could merge the 2 on 1 map

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago


yayaya! nice idea! But you did cut off Oz's East coast...

Very nice idea, indeed. I also know of a German poi forum, that has a "User-locator", where you can put in your (geographical) position...

YAY for maps and events!

the best smiles are the ones you lead to

Posted: 19 years ago
What about the possibility of adding GPS compatibility and cross referencing that with the member list, so you can see where every member of the board is at any moment?

Posted: 19 years ago
Joh, I think that might break a few laws, but if you want to be the first to have the chip implanted then feel free

Whats the best world wide way of locating places? X&Y cords? If so, is there a way to convert, for example, a UK post code to grid reference? Or does google take care of this?

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
google only does lat/lon grid references. If you type an address into multimap.co.uk, it'll tell you the lat/lon grid reference so that's the UK sorted. I'd imagine there are similar services for other parts of the world as well?

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
Somehow remake GooglEarth coord file(not sure it exist) to be client or server updated?

:R

POI THEO(R)IST

Posted: 19 years ago
Google Earth is a great idea! However, I think it should be a 2nd project to this, as Google Maps has an open API that works really well with 3rd party web sites (like HoP). Earth on the other hand is a desktop program that isn't used by as many people. I think it wouldn't help most people find events, where as the Maps API would.

I'd love to see either though

Hyperlight, do you want me to look in to making a post/zip code to lat/long script? I don't really like the idea of havnig to go to multimap in order to place an event on the google maps API....! Haven't google thought of this? Do you have any code written yet? Would you like some more server space for a public FTP server? Let me know of anything I can do, I'm really keen on this!

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
I'll second what you said about google earth... althouh it would be rather cool

A post/zip script would be very helpful indeed. I agree that it'd be neater if we could do it all in one go. I had a quick google to try and see if anyone had already done one, but didn't get very far.

So far, I've got a wee database set up and a php script that reads from it and places the results on a map. It's currently running on my server, but it might be a good idea to shift it to somewhere more people can work on it. I'm more than happy to have some help!

I started looking at iCalendar yesterday - doesn't look too tough to me, although I think to begin with, I'll just get things reading out of the database and into a table of events. I think it's important to get that established along with a way to add / remove events etc.

I've been trying to think of a reasonable way to administrate the thing. Could be kinda tricky as we don't want anyone deleting or destroying information, but at the same time I'd rather not limit things too much. I wonder if we could re-use the login information from the board and make it so you need 50+ posts to start / edit an event?

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
Ok, server set up:

username: eventmap
password: homeofpoi
URL: eventmap.kwyu.co.uk
cpanel: eventmap.kwyu.co.uk/cpanel

See the cpanel for more info on the MySQL.

It's a PHP 5.1.2 server with ruby on rails 1.0 and MySQL 4.1

If you want I could set up a CVS account on it, but I think that might be over kill for it. Maybe everyone working on it should make a new folder in the public_html folder. Then we can all review contribs and 'commit' them to the main code if we like them.

I'm really keen to get started on this

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
Right, I've copied over what I've got, but can't get it going. Have a look at this:

eventmap.kwyu.co.uk/eventdev/

I've not used that control panel thingy before, but it looks like I'm missing something obvious with names of databases, usernames, table names... something like that. See if you can spot it?

I don't think we need to worry overly about version control. There's probably only going to be the two of us working on it in any case? I've used subversion in the past and that's worked particularly well for me. If we could get that working on your server, it'd be ace

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
"There's probably only going to be the two of us working on it in any case?"

Im ore than willing to make as much tea as either of you can drink, and say "Ping!" regularly.
How does that sound?

Posted: 19 years ago
Milk and no sugar for me please

Pong

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
Ditto, very generous of you

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
mmmm, I assume you have had this code working on your server?

From what I can see all the names are correct, but I'm at work at the moment and the firewall stops me looking at the cpanel in full.

I'll post more when I'm at home

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 19 years ago
Yup, it was working fine on my own server...

Cake or Death?

Posted: 19 years ago
I'd be willing to chip in some time if you need any help. Send me a PM if so.

Definition of poi- A Hawaiian food made from the tuber of the taro that is cooked, pounded to a paste, and fermented.

Ahnold discussing poi - "It is naht a toober!"