Following on from my earlier post regarding Google Maps and Flex, I’ve put together a new example which I reckon’s pretty nifty.
Somehow my idea was spawned by Andrew Shorten’s post which discussed using Google Maps and the new Adobe Cocomo service to create a collaborative mapping application. And I say somehow, as I’m not really sure how I went off on the tangent of geo-locating IP addresses when the original post was about two users drawing stuff on a shared map! Maybe they can see where each other is on the map and start drawing a line until they meet somewhere in the middle…
Anyway, (il)logic aside here’s the example I whipped up:
View source is enabled in the following example.
The “Geo-locate IP address” text field should auto populate with your current IP address. The initial map will load and center on London.
When coding up the infowindow that displays, I found this reference on the Google site very useful - http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/reference.html
The actual information is coming from a whopping great big file that I’ve uploaded to my server which was supplied by Maxmind. There’s a few other databases that they supply, so I might add some more features to this example down the track. And they have pay for use and free versions of all their data, which is great!
pretty cool, thanks for sharing the code.
-abdul
Awesome stuff. Do you have the xml code for viewing?
@Peter - which xml code are you after? If you’re looking for the MXML code, then just right click on the Flash and “View Source”
I figured it out - DUH! :) but thanks for your help.
Hey,
Here is a tutorial to show how to install and use the MaxMind Database with PHP scripts examples. And it also shows how to display it on a map (Yahoo! Map) (french):
http://www.flex-tutorial.fr/2009/02/01/flex-yahoo-maps-api-geo-localisation-par-ip-dun-visiteur-exemple/
This is great. The map showed my actual location within yards!
Question for you about accuracy. Do you know of any resources that shows the reliability of current geolocation IP detection experiences.
I would like to be able to assure my clients that accurately identifying an end-users geolocation by IP address to the metro, or even state, level is above 90% accurate.
It would be great if there was some sort of public accessible statistics I could direct them to.
I know the service/database used has a lot to do with the final accuracy results but a 99.9% accurate database still is only one piece of the puzzle for a consistently reliable end-user experience.
Thanks!
-john
Hi John, you’d have to take this up with Maxmind (http://www.maxmind.com/app/city#api) who created the database.