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3 June 2009

sfEasyGMapPlugin 1.0.4 out

sfEasyGMapPlugin 1.0.4 is out and the good news is : the plugin is the 24th most used symfony plugin among the 457 available on http://www.symfony-project.org/plugins/ ! We are now 5 official developers, not counting all the developers I work with who contribute indirectly.

It all started because I was amazed by the success of the Phoogle library on the Internet despite its limited number of functionalities. And since almost all my projects involved a Google Map I wanted to create a plugin containing all the core functionalities I always reuse. Now I am happy to see the popularity of the plugin and am looking forward further possible developments that will continue in the spirit of including as many core functionalities of Google Maps-based application in the plugin.

New functionalities for the moment include :

  • More precise Mercator projections to convert GPS coordinates into Google Pixel coordinates and back GMapCoord::fromPixToLat, GMapCoord::fromLatToPix, etc.
  • Added the GMapBounds::getBoundsContainingMarkers(…) function
  • Added the GMap::centerAndZoomOnMarkers() function which enables to guess zoom and center of the map to fit the markers. Center is easy to guess. Zoom uses width and height of smallest bound, pixel width and height of the map and Mercator projection
  • Added tomr’s contribution: it is now possible to add multiple controls to the map
  • Added the GMapCoord::distance($coord1, $coord2) function which gives an estimation of the distance between two coordinates
  • Added the very useful function $gMap-> getBoundsFromCenterAndZoom(…) which enables one to calculate server-side the bounds corresponding to specific center coordinates, zoom, and map size. This is the equivalent of the client-side map.setCenter(…,…);map.setZoom(…);map.getBounds(); It uses the Mercator projection formulas as used by the Google Maps
  • A new function $gMapMarker->isInsideBounds($bounds)
  • A lot of unit tests
  • And two new samples

Please, feel free to suggest what you consider typical core functionalities of your Google Maps-based applications.

Filed under : sfEasyGMapPlugin, symfony — Fabrice Bernhard @ 0 h 49 min

13 March 2009

Symfony Google Maps API plugin : sfEasyGMapPlugin v1.0 is out!

sfEasyGmapPlugin is a very easy to use Google Maps API plugin for symfony, inspired by the Phoogle class… but better :-)

A very simple version has been available for a few months but I have now finally released the 1.0 version, with the following new features :

- it is now sf1.2 compatible straight out of the box
- it has some unit tests
- the GMap constructor now takes an array of parameters, which is much more flexible and also more in the symfony coding spirit (Warning : the modification of the GMap constructor should break your application if you used the prior version of sfEasyGMapPlugin)
- there are interesting functions concerning Bounds :
- smallest enclosing bound
- propel criteria “in bounds”
- homothety transformation
- zoomOut transformation
- there are interesting functions concerning conversion from/to lat/lng to/from Google’s pixel coordinates system. These can be very useful if you want to guess the bounds knowing only the center lat/lng, the zoom level and the map’s width/height in pixels. They involve a few mathematical formulas that were not so straightforward, (since you need to understand how Google’s projection works) so trust me, these functions are valuable, even if they only concern power users.

I have also developed a few doctrine-specific functions which are unfortunately not available yet because not generic enough. I will try to release them in the next version.

The official symfony page is here : http://www.symfony-project.org/plugins/sfEasyGMapPlugin

Please feel free to comment on this work in progress !

Filed under : sfEasyGMapPlugin, symfony — Fabrice Bernhard @ 16 h 16 min