Customer Reviews

Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax: From Novice to Professional

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am using this book to build a mapping application. I'm a beginning-intermediate web programmer and find the book well designed. There are nice sections on improving the user interfaces of map applications, updating maps with data queried from a database, and plenty of good examples (also posted on the book's website). It's a good all around case study in developing dynamic websites with JavaScript, custom controls, databases and PHP. There is a positive review on Slashdot as well.

This book was an absolutely incredible guide to the nuances of the Google Maps API. It clearly goes from simple integration, to geocoding to more complex functions such as overlays etc. I found it absolutely invaluable for my project, and I'm sure you will too.

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.

I haven't had a lot of luck with Apress. And this book is no exception. .kmz format inclusion use in chapter 1 not adequately described.
The recommended [...] site is a unusable, can't find Phoenix, Arizona and doesn't explain how to format your lat longs. Code samples are in tar, instead of zip format. Not a show stopper, but another annoyance. And lets face it, there are enough annoyances just learining a new API.

I am a fairly inexperienced, self taught programmer. I bought the book partly due to the fact that it had "beginning" in the title.

The code that is used in the book is not laid out very well. There are parts of the code that they don't explain (such as what apikey.php is) until you go and find out on their website what it means.

They are also very inconsistent. Sometimes they used apikey.php and sometimes they didn't. Going through the examples they use the same file names for different examples so you don't know if you are suppose to use the old files from the previous examples or not.

Even after I got all of the files that I needed for the tile overlay example it failed on me. This is after spending 3 hours reconstructing the MySQL table (which I didn't care about) because that information wasn't provided with the tile overlay example. After doing all of that work and using their unmodified code (except to change my database logins and api key) the code didn't work. And it failed BEFORE it even got to the MySQL database which means all that work I spent was for naught.

The authors suggest that you can email them (and I did a couple times) and they will get back to you. Its been several months and I still haven't heard back from any of them. The questions were about problems using their unmodified code.

This book may be good if you have some experience with coding. But on the other hand if that is the case there really isn't any need to buy the book.

I should have given this book five stars because it is such a treasure chest of information and most of it is error free. The authors also maintain an awesome website with corrections to a few instances where something got missed. If something doesn't work right in Internet Explorer with the script debugging tool turned on, check the website for updated code. For example, the overlays respond to clicks with the map event handler. Only the map should respond to the map click event handler, not the overlays. It's easy to fix, by testing to see if the overlay exists before executing the click handler on the overlay. If the overlay exists and the click is on the overlay, it should not execute the map click code.

I am using this book in one of my college classes. The book isn't the best out there, but was a good compromise. The author is simple, straight forward, and easy to read. A programming book that doesn't read like stereo instructions. Sometimes, he does leave out little steps that make you want to hit your head on the computer later. Also, I have found a couple of mistakes. Not sure if that is because I have the kindle version or if its apart of the original publication.

Even though there are little mistakes and such, the book is soooo much nicer than many of my other programming books. We only take three programming classes for our degree and are just thrown into it. So this is good for someone similar: who knows just enough programming to get you into trouble. (lol)

This book has a lot of very practical examples. With this book and the API docs you can make just about anything you like. Good, clear code and comments. Get this book if you want to make Google Maps.

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

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.