Thanks for the info, Charles! Yes, the info is quite over my head as jQuery is my first experience with Javascript, and I only started with jQuery a couple of months ago.
I'll keep your pointers on file if I ever get an opportunity to develop an app that I've been considering for my area. Thanks, again! Rick -----Original Message----- From: jquery-en@googlegroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of polyrhythmic Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 7:10 PM To: jQuery (English) Subject: [jQuery] Re: ANNOUNCE: Meijer.com launches -- using jQuery Very cool, jQuery is showing up everywhere! Unfortunately, the Store Locator does not locate any stores for me, no matter what I ask it. Regardless... Rick, the way to create a store locator from Google Maps is a pretty easy process, once you learn how to leverage the powerful API. I created a store locator with GMaps (before I was jQuery enlightened) at http://www.pave-eze.com/distributors.php . The GMaps API works best with lat/long coordinates, and can find a latitude and longitude for you with the geocoder method. However, the geocoder will return an approximate lat/long if it can't find the address, so I ran my store addresses through the geocoder, doublechecked the lat/long, and then committed the lat/long into the database along with the addresses & phone numbers. Once you have the store lat/long coords in your db, the code is similar to the following: Run the geocoder on the user's address input: geocoder method is async, and requires an anonymous callback function (just like jQuery) to which it passes a point object (GLatLng object). var address = document.getElementById('address').value; if (geocoder) { geocoder.getLatLng(address, function(point) { findDistanceFrom(point); }); } Have your callback function call your distance calculating function. GMaps will find a distance (in meters) from any point object to another point object with the distanceFrom method: distance = point.distanceFrom(store); (I had to then convert meter distance to miles for us estadounidenses.) In my case, I have an array of stores loaded from the DB, and I create a new sorted stores array in order of distance, and then I redraw the page with stores in order of distance. I am assuming you are a) familiar with JS and b) familiar with the GMaps API. The source code is viewable (but not always pretty) at http://www.pave-eze.com/distributors.php and http://www.pave-eze.com/d_searcher.php . Hope this helps! Let me know if this doesn't make sense / you have further questions. Charles doublerebel.com
