[GIS] How to obfuscate data when using Google Maps

google mapsPHP

I've been working on a google map (v3 of the api) that is plotting 120 markers or so (or will do shortly) – see http://www.mediwales.com/mapping. If you view the source the map data is for all the see, is it possible to hide this?

I'm not worried about the code that is generating the map, just the data. The data is grabbed from a WordPress cms.

Here's the code that's generating it all:

<script type="text/javascript"> 
(function() { 

window.onload = function() { 
 var mc;
// Creating an object literal containing the properties we want to pass to the map 
var options = { 
zoom: 10, 
center: new google.maps.LatLng(52.40, -3.61), 
mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP 
}; 

// Creating the map 
var map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map'), options); 

// Creating a LatLngBounds object 
var bounds = new google.maps.LatLngBounds(); 

// Creating an array that will contain the addresses 
var places = []; 

// Creating a variable that will hold the InfoWindow object 
var infowindow; 
mc = new MarkerClusterer(map);
<?php
$pages = get_pages(array('child_of' => $post->ID, 'sort_column' => 'menu_order'));
$popup_content = array();
foreach($pages as $post)
    {
    setup_postdata($post);
    $fields = get_fields(); 
    $popup_content[] = '<p>'.$fields->company_name.'</p><img src="'.$fields->company_logo.'" /><br /><br /><a href="'.get_page_link($post->ID).'">View profile</a>';
    $comma = ", ";
    $full_address = "{$fields->address_line_1}{$comma}{$fields->address_line_2}{$comma}{$fields->address_line_3}{$comma}{$fields->post_code}";
    $address[] = $full_address;
    }
wp_reset_query();
echo 'var popup_content = ' . json_encode($popup_content) . ';';
echo 'var address = ' . json_encode($address) . ';';
?>

var geocoder = new google.maps.Geocoder(); 

var markers = [];

// Adding a LatLng object for each city  
for (var i = 0; i < address.length; i++) { 
    (function(i) { 
        geocoder.geocode( {'address': address[i]}, function(results, status) {
            if (status == google.maps.GeocoderStatus.OK) {
                places[i] = results[0].geometry.location;

                // Adding the markers 
                var marker = new google.maps.Marker({position: places[i], map: map});
                markers.push(marker);
                mc.addMarker(marker);

                // Creating the event listener. It now has access to the values of i and marker as they were during its creation
                google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', function() {
                    // Check to see if we already have an InfoWindow
                    if (!infowindow) {
                        infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow();
                    }

                    // Setting the content of the InfoWindow
                    infowindow.setContent(popup_content[i]);

                    // Tying the InfoWindow to the marker 
                    infowindow.open(map, marker);
                });

                // Extending the bounds object with each LatLng 
                bounds.extend(places[i]); 

                // Adjusting the map to new bounding box 
                map.fitBounds(bounds) 
            } else { 
            alert("Geocode was not successful for the following reason: " + status); 
            }

        });

    })(i);

} 
var markerCluster = new MarkerClusterer(map, markers); 
} 
})
(); 
</script>

Best Answer

You can store your data in a database (Fusion Tables is a quick solution).

Google Maps has a tutorial that shows you how to do this with MySQL (but can be any database) http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/phpsqlajax_v3.html

You can get as secure and obfuscated as you want using a database back-end.

Looks like you geocode your data on the fly - you will be limited to 1000 request a day per IP address.

Would be more efficient to geocode and then update the database near-realtime.

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