Google Maps Guru's

[silver.fox.2008]

Hi guys,

Been searching the web for info about plooting points on Google maps. I'm really after the same info as this guy

• ****We are a wholesale company, and basically want to be able to view the physical locations of our retail stores for the purpose of approving new stores based on their location. Our address data is stored in Filemaker (Pro 9), and we'd love to be able to view the output in filemaker (via a web viewer). Having said this, obviously from filemaker it's easy to export data as CSV.

Google maps is obviously the best way to view the stores. We'd love to be able to have all our current stores plotted in one colour pin, then all of our pending application stores in another coloured pin, then have all of our wholesale application stores in a third coloured pin. We'd also love to be able to update the list of stores ongoing, so that we have current data.

Does anyone know how we can accomplish this task? We've had a look at a couple of websites that do similar multiple plot points, but we'd love a bit more control (coloured pins, update information etc.)*****

Any advice?

[john_p]

We do exactly this to track our installation sites. It's very easy, once you work out the format Google needs.

You need to output a KML file via some program (we use PHP) then tell google maps to load that KML file. KML is just an XML-similar text file containing information like

<folder>
<name>My Installs</name>
<placemark>
<name>My House</name>
<address>HP10 1AA</address>
<point>
<coordinates>-0.1,51.1234</coordinates>
</point>
</placemark>
</folder>

Lots more commands available, including label and pin colours. Start reading at
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation

I'm not sure if Google Maps can do different pin colours (we use Google Earth and it works fine).

If you can understand PHP I'll email you a copy of the script we use.

[silver.fox.2008]

Hi John,

Thanks for the info. I would really grateful if you could email me the scripts. I don't understand PHP personally but I know someone that does so can check with them.

You can email me through my profile.

Thanks mate