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

CHAPTER 4Geocoding Addresses

As you've probably already guessed, the heart of most mapping applications is correlating your information with latitudes and longitudes for plotting on your map. Fortunately, geocoding services are available to help you convert postal addresses to precise latitude and longitude coordinates. For locations in the United States and Canada, these services make geocoding addresses relatively easy and quite accurate most of the time. In other parts of the world, the job can become much harder.

In this chapter, while building a store locator map, you'll do the following:

• Request information from geocoding web services and process their responses
• Learn the pros and cons of Google's new JavaScript-based geocoder, as well ...