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HL-Dev What's the most efficient way to implement Google Maps mashups?
I've implemented a simple Google Map application that plots the top producers of a territory. Currently, the map is associated at the contact record level and it's set up as an S-Control that's attached to a custom button on the contact detail page.
I've started geocoding the contacts' addresses using the Google Map GClientGeoCoder class, which makes a call to the Google servers (I send the address to it and it returns the coordinates back). This process is very inefficient and overhead heavy, especially with multiple addresses. Plus, there's really no need to geocode an address if it has been previously, unless the address on the contact record has changed.
For anyone that has worked on integrating SF with GoogleMaps before: what's the best way to get the coordinates from an address? I've seen a previous thread that seems to store the coordinates into custom fields, but I cannot find the source code to understand how the storage-goecoding is done.
Any insights will be appreciated, thanks!
Message Edited by HL-Dev on 05-02-2008 09:41 AM
HL-Dev,
You have a couple of choices here:
1) User an Apex trigger to reset a flag on the record every time the address changes. The S-Control then uses the flag to determine which records need to be geocoded again. This is pretty easy to do and provides the best performance.
2) You could use some type of hash function on the address and store the hash result in the data record. Each time you can compute the hash of the address and see if it matches the one stored on the record, if not, you geocode. This works as well but may not be as performant since you need to compute the hash and compare everytime you map. You will want to keep your hash function as simple as possible.
Hope this helps!
Randy
HL-Dev,
Ideally, the best way to handle the address change is to use a Apex trigger that calls out to Google's geocoding service to geocode it in real time. Google does provide a HTTP interface to their geocoding service (http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Geocoding_Direct) and Apex code does allow you to make HTTP calls. However, their is a limitation right now that you cannot make HHTP calls from a Apex trigger. Until this limitation is resolved, this method won't work.
So, the way I have gotten around this is the S-Control that does the mapping does the geocoding in realtime as it maps. So in my mashup, I'm mapping accounts. I query salesforce for the accounts including the lat and long fields. As I'm creating the map, I check to see if lat and long are null, if so, I call Googles gecoding service to get the lat, lon and then update the record with lat and lon. This works pretty good. Initially you may want to geocode the contacts seperetly so when the S-Control runs, it only has to geocode a few records. I have not tested this with geocoding thousands of records.
Now to deal with address changes, you could write an Apex trigger that when the addresses changes, simply set the lat and long field to null. When someone views the map, then lat and long will get updated. Or you could store some type of hash of the address and then compare the hashes as you do the mapping. This method tends to become a bit more compute intensive so you may want to go witht he Apex code if you can.
I hope this helps,
Randy
The DevLife,
I agree that the best approach to handle address change will be to use an Apex trigger/class that calls out to Google's geocoding service. I hope some time in the near future, SF adds a way to maky HTTP calls from Apex (maybe with the release of VisualForce?)
By reading your setup, I see that it's very similar to mine. I plot contact records according to a certain criteria and the S-Control is associated to a custom button. I have a second button that's dedicated to geocoding only if needed (calls out to Google only if any of the coordinates are null). The button that displays the map shows when the time of the last geocoding was, just to give the user an idea of how accurate the map is.
I'll try what you had suggested: to create an Apex trigger when an address has changed that will reset the coordinates to null. Since this change is done server side, the S-Control should be able to see the updated values of the coordinates (null) and execute the geocoding.
Thank you for your input!