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

PART 2Beyond the Basics

CHAPTER 5Manipulating Third-Party Data

In this chapter, we cover two of the most popular ways of obtaining third-party data for use on your map: using downloadable character-delimited text files and screen scraping. To demonstrate manipulating data, we use a single database in this and the next two chapters (the FCC Antenna Structure Registration database). In the end, you'll have an understanding of the data that will be used for the sample maps, as well as how the examples might be generalized to fit your own sources of raw information.

In Appendix A, you'll find a list of other sources of free information that you could harvest and combine to make maps. You might want to thumb to this appendix to see some other neat ...