Creating a Yelp/Google Maps mashup in Java

Generator PDF 417 in Java Creating a Yelp/Google Maps mashup

In the earlier section, Creating a map, we walk you through building a Google map for some out-of-town friends attending a party in Austin If you ve never been to Austin, one particular food item worth discussing (at least briefly) is breakfast tacos Depending on where you live, you may not have heard of these delectable treats For those who don t know, in its simplest

form, a breakfast taco holds beloved breakfast items (eggs, potatoes, bacon, and so forth), plus salsa (mild, hot, green, or whatever), rolled up inside a tortilla (whole wheat, white, or corn are common, but other variations can and do pop up) Now that we think about it, a breakfast taco is a great subject here because you could say it s a food mashup! Say those out-of-town guests will benefit from a list of breakfast taco restaurants during their visit for the party In case they re not inclined to trust our culinary judgment, we can create a mashup that lets them see what a whole bunch of people in Austin think about various breakfast taco restaurants all over town Here s a search at Yelp that proffers this kind of info: wwwyelpcom/search find_desc=breakfast+tacos&ns=1&find_ loc=Austin%2C+TX We could send our friends a link to Yelp, which provides 600-plus results (at the moment) with reviews and comments from real people This helpful info is bound to provide our friends with lots of opinions and data on the breakfast taco restaurants in Austin The Yelp list also includes addresses and phone numbers to help our friends find each and every location By itself, though, this Yelp list alone doesn t actually show where each restaurant is located Adding this capability is what mashups are about, and what gives them their value So we do that very thing and give our friends a map to go along with the address so they don t get lost (or too terribly hungry) while on their quest for breakfast tacos In Figure 15-5, notice the little map on the right side of that page for a perfect example of a mashup Here, Yelp is presenting its data (Yelp already stores the address for each location) on a Google Map of Austin Just as in the previous section s map, our friends can zoom and pan this map, but here, they also get Yelp overlays for each location from Yelp s own site data The combination is better than either part by itself, see Clicking the Mo Map hyperlink expands the tiny default map to show location data better Click Less Map to see a smaller map but with more restaurant info (the default view) Pretty neat, isn t it It may not be revolutionary, but if you hover ahead on a few of the markers on the map, you see information about each location from Yelp by using the Google Map Double-click any such marker, and you jump to the Yelp detail page for the corresponding location In all these ways, Yelp has mashed up its breakfast taco data (locations, reviews, comments, addresses, hours, and so forth) and made it all accessible through a Google Map to create the best of both worlds At this point, you re probably saying: Gee, that s great but this is Yelp s work I m sure they have great programmers who simply rolled up their sleeves and figured this out for themselves That s true, but you can take a similar approach to build something for yourself

We decided to expand on this idea (as shown in Figure 15-6) in a Web site that author Jeff Noble and his friend Ron Norman created just for grins Taking the same approach as Yelp, they accessed its API (remember, that s application programming interface, fancy talk for programming links that let services talk to one another through a Web page) to display Yelp information about breakfast taco joints inside a Google satellite map The results are displayed in Figure 15-6 below or check it out online at www breakfasttacomapcom Notice how we updated the map markers with little breakfast taco icons You can do this, too! All sorts of neat customizations are possible when you make your own mashups No salsa needed, either! For more information, check out these resources: The Google Maps JavaScript API V3 at http://codegooglecom/ apis/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/indexhtml Yelp for Developers at wwwyelpcom/developers/documentation