6

What i need is the lat/long of the client(via browser)

Found some articles on the net,found some in stack overflow itself(an old article) Get GPS location from the web browser. it was answered almost 18months ago -- wondering if there's any other(more efficient) way of getting the information of the location of the user from the browser.

Soo far,found 2

using Maxmind

Other,using google's api

w3c's geo api will have downward compatibility issues: http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html ,so not choosing that.

Found a site, www.drumaroo.com -- requests for the location to be shared the 1st time when we drop into the site.Needed something similar

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Vivek Chandra
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  • The W3C GeoLocaiton API is the only way to do this without relying on an IP-based location database (like Google's). The website you gave an example uses both of these APIs. – 一二三 Sep 24 '11 at 09:50
  • see this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3940767/how-to-get-client-location-using-google-maps-api-v3 – mre666 Sep 24 '11 at 09:54

6 Answers6

5

The user can be located by using following ways:-

  1. Using the IP addr. easiest to achieve but most unreliable due to the uncertainty of network addresses / topologies.
  2. Using the latitude, longitude pair most accurate solution, but most of the end users don’t know about their latitude, longitude value.
  3. Using the zipcodes nice to think but quite difficult to achieve, although ZipCodes are being used for
    quite a long time but this is not a standard yet. (see link
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_code ). ZipCode alone is not sufficient for calculation of distance we need to convert it to latitude, longitude pair which is an
    overhead.
  4. Using user’s address most compelling thought since each user will have at least one geographic address. Address alone is not sufficient for calculation of distance we need to convert it to latitude, longitude pair which is an overhead.

The Best option will be to use options 2,3.4 together, You can do that in two steps:-

  1. First determine the latitude, longitude from the address.
  2. Then use this lat, long value for further processing i.e. storing in database etc.

For various options available for this see the answer of this question

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Amit
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  • see the answer of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8800267/get-longtitude-latitude-combination-based-on-distance-and-digree/8800334#8800334 for code.... – Amit Jan 16 '12 at 05:34
1

Try HTML5 geolocation 

 function init() {


 var mapOptions = {
    zoom: 8,
    mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP
 };


 map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map-canvas'),
  mapOptions);



if(navigator.geolocation) {
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
  var pos = new google.maps.LatLng(position.coords.latitude,
                                   position.coords.longitude);

  var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow({
    map: map,
    position: pos,
    content: 'Location found using HTML5.'
  });

  map.setCenter(pos);
}

 } else {
alert('Geolocation not detected');   
}
}
Asif hhh
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1

Here is geolocation described:

http://www.w3schools.com/htmL/html5_geolocation.asp

The lat/lng can then be reverse-geocoded to find the country, address. etc.

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/geocoding-reverse

pasx
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0

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/examples/map-geolocation . simply click on javascript+html and copy the code into an html file.

skdev75
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0

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
<title>Reverse Geocoding</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var geocoder;

if (navigator.geolocation) {
    var location_timeout = setTimeout("geolocFail()", 10000);

    navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
        clearTimeout(location_timeout);

        var lat = position.coords.latitude;
        var lng = position.coords.longitude;

        geocodeLatLng(lat, lng);
    }, function(error) {
          alert("inside error ");
        clearTimeout(location_timeout);
        geolocFail();
    });
} else {
      alert("Turn on the location service to make the deposit");
    // Fallback for no geolocation
    geolocFail();
}

function geolocFail(){
 alert("Turn on the location service to make the deposit");
 document.write("Turn on the location service to make the deposit");
}

/*if (navigator.geolocation) {
navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(successFunction, errorFunction);
}
//Get the latitude and the longitude;
function successFunction(position) {
var lat = position.coords.latitude;
var lng = position.coords.longitude;
codeLatLng(lat, lng)

}
function errorFunction(){
alert("Geocoder failed");
} */

function initialize() {
geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder();

}
function geocodeLatLng(lat, lng) {
var latlng = new google.maps.LatLng(lat, lng);
geocoder.geocode({'latLng': latlng}, function(results, status) {
if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
console.log(results)
if (results[1]) {
//formatted address
var add= results[0].formatted_address
alert(add);

//city data
//alert(city.short_name + " " + city.long_name)

} else {
alert("No results found");
}
} else {
alert("Geocoder failed due to: " + status);
}
});
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="initialize()">
</body>
</html>
arvind
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This is HTML code to trace the device(Browser/Mobile) location .Just save the above file as .html extension and browse it from any browser on your system or Mobile ,it will display the user current location.

arvind
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