Working with Geolocation in Wordpress

Working with Geolocation in
WordPress
@brianhogg
http://slideshare.net/bhogg

Overview
@brianhogg WordCamp Buffalo Sep 2013 2
 Why Geolocation
 Capturing the Data
 Using the Data
 Getting Visitor Location

About Brian Hogg
 Software Engineering & Management
 Started and sold DrawBINGO.com
 Lived in Montréal, England, now Cambridge
(Ontario)
 PHP/JS since 2003

Why Geolocation
 Events blog
 Recommendations
 Mapping
 Store locations
 … anything with content + latitude/longitude

5@brianhogg WordCamp Buffalo Sep 2013

Capturing the Data
 “Official” Geolocation plugin
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/geolocation/
 WP-Geo
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-geo/ (for
custom post types)
 WordPress native apps
 … other plugins / themes
Inserting a latitude and longitude for posts.

Capturing the Data

Capturing the Data
Inserts a latitude and longitude for each post in the
post meta data.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Geodata

Capturing the Data
 Import from CSV

Capturing the Data
 Translating address string to lat/lon (geocode)
http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?
address=Hamilton+ON&sensor=false
<geometry>
<location>
<lat>43.2500208</lat>
<lng>-79.8660914</lng>
</location>
<location_type>APPROXIMATE</location_type>
</geometry>

Using the Data
 Simple front-end pop-up
 Using WP_Query (meta_query)
 Hooks to store in separate, indexed table
 Custom feeds
 …

Using the Data
 Simple front-end pop-up

Using the Data
 Database query
 Get location of user
 Restrict posts using a “bounding box”
 Ordering by distance from a lat/lon

Using the Data
 Using WP_Query (meta_query)

Using the Data
 Bounding box query

Using the Data
 Using WP_Query

Using the Data
SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS wp_posts.ID FROM wp_posts INNER JOIN
wp_postmeta ON (wp_posts.ID = wp_postmeta.post_id) INNER JOIN
wp_postmeta AS mt1 ON (wp_posts.ID = mt1.post_id) LEFT JOIN
wp_geo geo ON wp_posts.ID = geo.post_id WHERE 1=1 AND
wp_posts.post_type = 'post' AND (wp_posts.post_status =
'publish' OR wp_posts.post_status = 'private') AND
( (wp_postmeta.meta_key = 'geo_latitude' AND
CAST(wp_postmeta.meta_value AS DECIMAL) BETWEEN '42' AND '43')
AND (mt1.meta_key = 'geo_longitude' AND CAST(mt1.meta_value AS
DECIMAL) BETWEEN '-79.9999' AND '-78') ) GROUP BY wp_posts.ID
ORDER BY wp_posts.post_date DESC LIMIT 0, 15
 Sample WP_Query SQL (bounding box)

Using the Data
 WP_Query method very inefficient especially with
larger amounts of data
 Separate table can be used with an index,
numeric data format

Using the Data
 Create a new indexed table in the database
 Create a WP hook to store in the new table
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `wp_geo` (
`post_id` bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL,
`lat` float NOT NULL,
`lon` float NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`post_id`),
KEY `latlon` (`lat`,`lon`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Using the Data

Using the Data
 posts_clauses filter

Using the Data

Using the Data
 Custom feeds
 Page templates
 Caching?

Using the Data
 Create map markers from
one or more JSON based
feeds

Getting Visitor Location
 IP address (approximate)
 GPS
 Google Maps API

Getting Visitor Location
 IP address (approximate)
 MaxMind – www.maxmind.com
 HostIP - http://www.hostip.info/use.html
 http://ipinfodb.com/ip_location_api.php
 Javascript request (navigator.geolocation)

Resources / Contact
brian@bhconsulting.ca
@brianhogg

Working with Geolocation in Wordpress

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