A shared location mark-up map page/tab for members to tag. Non-members can view markers and comments on the map, but only members can add and edit. I saw it as a genuinely good use of maps if the forum is localised.

Note: If someone would like to improve my database layer (and procedural code) and help tighten this up in general, it would be greatly appreciated!

Darn it, I was sure I'd tested it thoroughly. What browser are you using, I'll try and replicate the error and revise...

Uploaded version 0.2 of GoogleMapDirectory.

Hi GMonkey,

Give this 0.2 version a go. A few revisions noted in the default.php. Let me know what happens. Cheers for your patience on this, its my first extention so bound to be a few teething problems. This is working fine on Firefox and Explorer on PC (some noddy error exceptions on IE, though they don't affect functionality), I don't have your browser so I'll use you as my tester if you don't mind!

OK, is this happening on both Camino and Firefox? I'm just not getting these errors, is there anything in Firefox's error console i can work from? Also ensure you've refreshed your cache and not loading previous javascript etc by mistake. If the locations aren't showing up, it should spit something out about javascript/ajax errors. I'm gonna hook up a mac next week to start testing more.

As for the requests, no none of those are in the extension at present, and before they are entertained, I'm hoping to find another extension coder to shore up the database stuff and get the foundations solid first. I've started this at a super low version of 0.1 - 0.2 so it can develop a lot before hitting a version 1.

Gmonkey, I think its breaking down due to certain data input. I'll revise the code trying to use Vanilla in built data input functions. Could you post the sql for your table at present so I can get it working with that as my test.

Ok, found a bug in my JSON not escaping double quotes. Hopefully that'll catch your errors GMonkey. I have a feeling that's not the last I'll hear of string literal errors, but not being a guru I learn by what happens in the field...

Am I not doing something correctly? I am unable to get this to work at all...nothing shows up after installing the extension and inserting my API key obtained from google. Are there additional steps?

Does anyone have a functioning example that i can view?

Cheers Dinoboff, I'm not great at the whole Vanilla coding thing, as you can tell by the shakey start to this, but the reason I put this up was exactly for bug finding and other coders to help me tidy it up. I had no other way of furthering it.

I've put a basic example up at http://www.dkltd.net/vanilla

GMonkey, keep the faith - we will get it going eventually. I too think it'll be a great plugin, but I'm in dire need of the vanilla community's more technical guys help on this. Hopefully it'll gather some momentum and get much more robust. Until then you'll have to put up with me fixing things as they break. Anyone out there got some light to shed on data integrity, vanilla and JSON...? It's giving me headaches.

i'll add Dinoboff's code and an address box, and get that input above working - it's the paragraph line return that's crashing it. Very strange, but i'll fix it over the weekend. Also it needs a delete action, should I limit this to administrators you think?

ThaRiddla, do you have any tab management/page management extensions running? I know the Page Management extension screws with the default manner of adding tabs, but if you are using that, you can simply add a tab and give the url of

<YourDomain>/extension.php?PostBackAction=GoogleMapDirectory

ThaRiddla, do you have any tab management/page management extensions running?

That was it. Thanks! I didn't need my domain, BTW....just extension.php?PostBackAction=GoogleMapDirectory

Davidk43

Cool I look forward to the new one. Seems to break also if you add more than 5 location options and or use 2 or more words to describe the locations. Example: Organic Grocer, Fine Dinning, so on, breaks the map once you post 2 locations.

Have you seen the maps with special icons for each location type?
http://www.giveittomeraw.com/la/

OK version 0.3 now. I've added address and telephone numbers, with a little formatting to the popups on the map. Also location creators can now delete their own markers - though the last person to edit becomes the creator - I'll change this, its an interim solution, as I'm not sure of the best place for deletes and at what level they should be. It's a little unclear as should someone be able to delete what someone else has edited? Perhaps just have admin only delete's? Or is that something admins can't be bothered with? Any thoughts on this, anyone?

I've also added Dinoboff's ammendment and tidied up the table and some naming stuff.

Most importantly of all i've encoded all input fields with base64 now which should address the problems above. Probably shouldn't have released this without that but I didn't have much knowledge of it before I started looking into these problems. Obviously I'm not foolish enough to declare this issue fixed just yet!

GMonkey, yes i've played with putting different icons onto maps but think it'd be too awkward in this instance, its not just a case of letting users pin a gif/png to a category type, as they need to declare the pin point of an image etc, it gets messy quickly and you'd end up with markers not correctly place on a map if not done correctly. We could perhaps have a standard, say a marker as now with topical images overlayed, not affecting the dimensions and pinpoint of the marker, possibly something for the future but I think it'd muddy things right now.

i had some problems with uploading this over the previous version, I ended up manually deleting the old table in the database first. Perhaps someone out there could look at that side of housekeeping for me..?

Works great for me, been up a few days and 20 locations added already with no problems although nobody's tried putting much in the text balloon as its not needed yet. Different icons might be nice even just different coloured markers could be quite handy but no point giving yourself too much work just yet!

Davidk43,

Hmm the thread idea is good, but I don't think that is clear. Maybe there there should be a text box above the links, so we can have some text explaining how to use the map..

I tried to implement this on my site but it doesn't play well with SEO urls; ie:

http://www.fngeeks.net/vanilla/extension.php?PostBackAction=GoogleMapDirectory

instead of:

http://www.fngeeks.net/vanilla/extension/?PostBackAction=GoogleMapDirectory

very nice, i just added it to www.cinemaworkshop.com/vanilla, which is our university filmmaking club

my only qualm is that there's no search box, which would be much better than having to drag around the map

everything works fine EXCEPT the google navigation button images are not loading for me. (ie the zoom in/out. they are just blank white squares)

also seems to have trouble parsing punctuation like ' or "

Hi all,

Ok this does seem to be generating some interest now. I've been busy knocking walls down in my house and not very web2 at all! I'll try and aggregate the above as some kind of action list, which won't happen til late next week at the best.

1) ThaRiddla - I'll try and capture the current location and pass it to the AddLocation page.
2) alecglen - Yep, can see that glitch, i'll endeavour to fix
3) GMonkey - I'll add an explanation and perhaps prefix that field with the discussion thread url so you just enter a discussion id number?
4) radioboy - search has already been requested, not sure how that fits with the layout and stuff. I think we focus on getting the fundamentals working properly before extending.
5) skube - no, the address is manual, further info for your marker
6) onetwentyeight - the google nav comes straight out of google's code, its nothing to do with the extension, check on a few browsers. I have added a delete function but its a bit half-arsed. Next version will have 'created by' and 'last edited by' for each marker. Then admin can set whether anyone, creator or just admin can delete - at least that's the plan. I thought I'd caught the parsing issues, which field isn't working for you?

Phew. Looks like I have my work cut out. Still no volunteers out there to help me further this?

128 - are you sure you've got the latest version? This is quite clearly working for me. Anyone else? GMonkey?

Hmm... I like 128's idea of restricting where pins can be placed.

I might add a boxed area to the extension so that only points that fall within specific longitudes and latitudes get added. If I do this, would you like a copy of my modifications to consider adding as an option to the extension?

It will be a boxed area, a simple "lat between a and b" and "long between x and y" thing. Test in JavaScript refuse to add if outside the boxed area, the value for a, b, x and y would be hard-coded along with a boolean switch to activate the logic within the hacks default.php file.

V. nice hack :)

Yeah ok, so we add four exta fields to the settings page, if they're empty then no restrictions if they aren't then process a "boundaryLimits" function at form submission? I'm happy for that to be added, buro9. I'm working on version 0.4 which incorporates most of the above, should be ready in a week to two, want to get that to me for that release? How's your extension coding? I could do with some guidance, I'm winging this on some very limited knowledge!

Yep, your extension works after I deactivated the MemberGoogleMap extension.

My extension coding is limited... I donated a chunk of code for AJAX and JSON loading of Flickr images (prevents server work), but didn't know how to wrap it up.

But now I've actually got an installation of Vanilla it's not so bad ;) Happy to help out if you need it.

BTW, You appear to have left a polygon over part of North London. Commenting out drawArea() within Map.js (line 33) took care of it. Were you just playing with paths and shapes? Or did you have more functionality in mind?

It's in use on http://www.londonfgss.com/ now :)

I can't get this to show added locations (they are in the database tho), using the latest version. It just shows a blank map. Is this a php5 thing? I'm still on 4.