Product Description

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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176862 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Michael Purvis is a mechatronics engineering student at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He is a mostly self-taught programmer. Prior to discovering PHP, he was busy making a LEGO Mindstorms kit play Connect 4. Currently, he maintains an active community site for classmates, built mostly from home-brewed extensions to PunBB and MediaWiki.

He has written about CSS for the Position Is Everything web site, and occasionally participates in the css-discuss mailing list. He particularly enjoys those clever layouts that mix negative margins, relative positioning, and bizarre float tricks to create fiendish, cross-browser, flexible-width concoctions. These and other nontechnical topics are discussed on his weblog at uwmike.com.

Offline, he enjoys cooking, cycling, and social dancing. He has worked for We-Create, Inc. on a number of exciting PHP-based projects and has a strong interest in independent web standards.

Jeffery is a graphic designer and self-taught web applications developer best known for his unique ability to merge the visual world of graphics with the mental realm of code. With a Bachelor of Technology degree in Graphic Communications Management along with a minor in Multimedia, Jeffrey was originally trained for the traditional paper-and-ink printing industry, but he soon realized the world of pixels and code was where his ideas would prosper. In late 1999, he cofounded We-Create, Inc., an Internet software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, which began many long nights of challenging and creative innovation.

Currently, as Director of Research and Development for We-Create, Jeffrey is responsible for investigating new and emerging Internet technologies and integrating them using web standards-compliant methods. In late 2005, he also became a Zend Certified Engineer.

When not playing at the office, Jeffrey enjoys a variety of hobbies from photography to woodworking. When the opportunity arises, he also enjoys floating in a canoe on the lakes of Algonquin Provincial Park or going on an adventurous, map-free, drive with his wife. Jeffrey also maintains a personal website at JeffreySambells.com, where he shares thoughts, ideas, and opinions about web technologies, photography, design, and more. He lives in Ontario, Canada, eh, with his wife, Stephanie, his newborn daughter, Addison, and their little dog, Milo.


Cameron Turner has been programming computers since his first VIC 20 at age 7. He has been developing interactive web sites since 1994. In 1999, he cofounded We-Create, Inc., which specializes in Internet software development. He is now the company's chief technology officer. Cam obtained his honors degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo with specialization in applied cryptography, database design, and computer security.

Cam lives in Canada's technology capital of Waterloo, Ontario, with his wife, Tanya, son, Owen, and dog, Katie. His hobbies include biking, hiking, water skiing, and painting. He maintains a personal blog at CamTurner.com, discussing nontechnical topics, thoughts, theories, and family life.

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Customer Reviews

Must buy
If you are going to get one book to learn or improve your Google Maps skill, this is the book. This very well organized book introduces you the basics and then moves on some advance staff that you have to learn if you want to develop serious Google Maps application.
You can check out the table of content and sample chapters from its website.
I enjoyed reading it and therefore I highly recommend it for Google Map developers.

From a Web Programing Instructors point of View
Wow and Kool are the first words that come to mind after reading just the Into and Chapter 1.

As a Web Programming Instructor, I am always searching for easy ways to get my students motivated. Page 2 of Chapter 1 shows an XML and XHTML strict - but the code is so straight forward - that you are not in the least intimidated with the strict XHTML. To find something students can relate to that gives a solid example of two abstract things - is great. There is nothing to be intimidated with, the explanations are clear and the web site - give corrections. Each chapter offers a lot fore each level user.

Chapter 1 is fun for a wide range of web skills: Web Development, Digital Photographers, Digital Imaging, and more advanced.

Chapter 2 - gives the JavaScript, XHTML developer's lots of detail on what is going on in the script. Each exercise builds on the previous one, until by the end of the chapter you have a robust program, you can use immediately.

Chapter 3 - adds user input, it begins the discussion of adding to a Database & Ajax. You have a dialog wit the authors of why they did what they did - it's insight to working with a database. The chapters keep getting richer and draw you in. You hate to put it down!

Appendix B has a generous 28 page summary of the important API commands, making learning Google Maps API easier.

I am adding this to my Reference Book list
and it will defiantly be a required reading for Advanced PHP classes.

Jil MacMenamin
http://JilMac.com

Very clear and focused in real solutions
This book is very well written. Very concise, clear and focused in the real world problems and solutions. Following the advices and codes of the book, you will can afford most of your google maps projects knowing exactly what to do, and how to do it. I specially find very interesting the chapter dedicated to how to code a map with multitude of markers. Very clarifying.

Must have-read book if you are working in a Google Maps project.