Google map with live data from an SQL database

[CAWJames]

Evening all,

 

there was a similar thread in the How do you do it thread years ago, but doesn't really go far enough, so here is my question.

 

We have a database that contains address data for all the veterinary practices that have our students, I would like to be able to have a google map page on our internal website that will plot these practices on a map and give some metadata, ie which students are at that practice(all in our DB) and hopefully a search function. Basically we have people go out and assess the practice or the student, and then find someone else goes out the next week to a practice 2 miles up the road, so we are trying to increase efficiency, so our people can quickly see what other practices and students are in the area.

 

Is this possible with the API, or is it going to be a b*ll-ache? I have found a commercial website that does this, but it is $99 a month!

 

Any help would be appreciated

 

thanks

 

James

[webman]

Hi James!

 

That sort of thing is certainly possible with the Google Maps API. The maps API for websites is javascript-based, so the main task involved will be to get the necessary data from the database and then eventually into something useable with maps.

 

A popular way of doing this would be to create an API. The purpose of this would be to connect to the database, find the information it needs, then process it and transform it into the correct format so that maps can use it. The way this is done will mostly be decided by what type of database you have, scripting technologies available, and coding knowledge.

 

Another aspect that might need to be done is to "geocode" the practice addresses, if the Lat and Lng coordinates aren't already available. Google have APIs to do this as well.

[NotSoFast]

Depends how often it changes. If it's fairly static you could just use something like batchgeo (https://batchgeo.com/).

[NotSoFast]

Although I guess the "live" in the title suggests you want it, er, live.

[CAWJames]

BatchGeo is the service I was looking at, but at $99 a month, bit pricey, and the free offering is stunted at 250 entries. But it could be used to produce some snapshot interactive maps with some admin time, just not live to a database

[NotSoFast]

Maybe https://www.easymapmaker.com then? I've never used it but it's free. The API method would clearly have advantages, but it all depends on how much work it would be for the added benefits.