Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional [Paperback]

Andre Lewis (Author), Michael Purvis (Author), Jeffrey Sambells (Author), Cameron Turner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590597877 | ISBN-13: 978-1590597873 | Publication Date: March 6, 2007 | Edition: 1st ed. 2007. Corr. 2nd printing

The Google Maps API remains one of the showcase examples of the Web 2.0 development paradigm, making it fairly trivial for third-party developers to incorporate dynamic mapping services into Web applications. In fact, interest in the Google service is so strong that it arguably sparked the mashup phenomenon, along with a number of websites such as http://www.gmapsmania.com intended to highlight some of the exciting applications developers are building using the mapping API in conjunction with a variety of other data sources.

Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax is the first book to comprehensively introduce the service from a developer-perspective, showing readers how they can integrate mapping features into their Rails-driven Web applications.

Proceeding far beyond simplistic map display, readers are shown how to draw upon a variety of data sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line data and Google's own geocoding feature to build comprehensive geocoding services for mapping many locations around the world.

Readers are also guided through various examples demonstrating how to encourage user interaction such as pinpointing map locations, adding comments, and building community-driven maps.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

scale enterprise consulting with Accenture to startup ventures and open-source projects.

Andre currently runs his own business developing commercial Ruby on Rails applications and consulting on web 2.0 technologies. His latest project pushes Rails into the enterprise by integrating tightly with Salesforce.com. You can find public examples of his recent work at http://earthcode.com. Andre also presents periodically at San Francisco bay-area Rails meetups, and is planning a talk at RailsConf Europe in September.

Mike Purvis is a Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. He maintains a weblog at uwmike.com and enjoys cooking, cycling, and playing with LEGO. He's worked on many web projects of various sizes and has a strong interest in independent standards and open source.

Jeff Sambells is a Graphic Designer and self taught Web Application developer best known for his unique ability to merge the visual world of graphics with the mental realm of code. With a Bachelor of Technology degree in Graphic Communications Management and a minor in Multimedia. In late 1999, he co-founded We-Create Inc., an internet software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, which began many long nights of challenging and creative innovation.

Cameron Turner has been programming interactive games since his first computer in 1985; interactive web sites since 1994; and since 1999 has been one of the founders of We-Create Inc. He obtained his honours degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo Ontario, with specializations in applied cryptography, database design and computer security. As the Chief Technology Officer at We-Create Inc., Cam has been involved in all aspects of Internet software development, design and specification. More than a manager, Cam maintains an active ability to develop in all of the latest break-through technologies as well as an ability to easily translate tech-talk into lay-English for clients and their stakeholders.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st ed. 2007. Corr. 2nd printing edition (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590597877
• ISBN-13: 978-1590597873
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Ajax

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Building Google Maps application in Rails, get this book, May 1, 2007

By 

Hugh Watkins (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)

I was worried when I ordered this book that it would just be a reference book of the Google Maps API, but thankfully I was wrong. This book is an excellent reference to anyone wanting to build a Google Maps enabled Rails Application.

The first four chapters take you through building an application, similar to the author's hotspotr application where a user can save Wifi hotspot information. For many people this may be all they are looking for, a way to create maps, save information and geocode addresses.

Chapters 5-8 deal with larger datasets and the example they use is from the FCC Antenna Structure Registration, which has 120k records already geocoded for you. It then takes you through different presentation methods. If you want to see the output, go to book dot earthcode dot com chapter seven, server custom tiles. It's a very impressive result, similar to the pictures of earth at night.

The rest of the book gives other advanced uses and apis, I have not read all the way through that but it looks interesting. The other thing I like about the tone of the book is the conversational style. For example in Chapter 5 where they are using the FCC dataset they talk about the advantages of using a mysql import instead of going through the ActiveRecord layer, resulting in importing the data in less than a minute compared to 1.5 hours with ActiveRecord. This is the type of information that usually only comes from time spent trying different methods, so it's nice for us to be able to leverage their hard work.

In general I have been impressed with the Apress books ( no pun intended) them and Pragmatic Programmers have really started giving O'Reilly a run for their money.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, May 14, 2007

By 

M. Lopke - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)

I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in using Google Maps with Ruby on Rails. My expectations were exceeded and I believe it lives up to its sub-title "From Novice to Professional".

I develop Rails applications and became interested in Google Maps in conjunction with a Real Estate application I was working on. In particular, I was interested using Google Maps for visual analysis of large data sets. Knowing next to nothing about the Google Maps API, I was truly at the Novice level. The book started off at the basics and quickly built on example and technique to the point where there was a working example of a problem similar in scope to mine. Along the way, the trade offs and techniques were well presented and explained in detail. Not only did I gain the knowledge and confidence to tackle my particular problem, but I was also inspired by all the other potential applications of this exciting new technology.

This book was well organized and written. I was obvious that the authors had worked through the examples and I especially appreciated many of the best practices and hints they gave. Chapter 7 "Optimizing and Scaling for Large Data Sets" was particularly interesting for me and my application. It included code and examples for several server-side and client-side techniques and as well as a clear explanation of their uses and trade offs.

If you are a Rails coder and you want to master Google Maps, this is a must have book

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, March 16, 2011

By 

J. Nguyen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional (Paperback)

I wouldn't recommend getting this book if you're trying to implement Google Maps on Rails. It is outdated if you are using Rails 3 and the Google maps API v3. I also didn't think the steps they have to chapter by chapter was structured very well - I prefer a more guided approach because I am relatively new to rails and javascript and there were a lot of places where it was easy to get stuck.

If you are trying to implement google maps on rails, I'd recommend maybe getting the Apress book on the GMaps API v3, and then just relying on Google/Stack Overflow to figure out how to integrate it into Rails. There doesn't seem to be any good books that provide this at the moment.