Mapstraction - Dec 2008 - Open Mapping API slides, mapstraction hacking, feedback

For OSDC (Open Source Developer''s Conference), we ran a Google
hackathon.
One of the topics we covered was open mapping APIs, where I gave a short
talk and then we did a few hours of Mapstraction hacking.

The slides for the talk are here:
http://www.slideshare.net/wuzziwug/open-maps-or-close-enough-presentation/

For the hacking, I gave attendees the following suggestions:

   - Structured:
      - http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial
      - http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial2
      - http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial3
      - Less Structured: Mappy Brain Age!
      - Use bits of code from the original Brain Age app when creating this
      one (the social bits are largely the same).
      - Load the Mapstraction API + Google API into the app (Hint: script
      append, script onload)
      - Initialize the map to the world view.
      - Instead of asking random math questions, ask the user to locate
      random places in the world (see Appendix for sample JSON).
      - Award them a correct answer if they''re within a particular
distance
      threshold.
      - Sample
Solution<http://osda.appspot.com/code/sample/agRvc2RhchELEgpDb2RlU2FtcGxlGMkYDA>



Most people did the first option. The guy who did the second option ran into
issues with Polygon.

In this function:

    var gpoints = [];
    for (var i = 0,  length = this.points.length ; i< length; i++){
        gpoints.push(this.points[i].toGoogle());
    }
    if (this.closed	|| this.gpoints[0].equals(this.gpoints[length-1])) {

this.gpoints should be simply gpoints

There were also various questions about how to put an event listener on the
map - it took me a while inspecting the code to figure it out myself. That
might be made clearer in an example or the reference.

On that note, the reference is a bit hard to navigate. I''m probably
biased
from my experience with Google Maps API, but if anyone was interested, you
can try generating 1-page Google-style docs. We have some scripts for doing
that in our open source lib:
http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-utility-library-dev/source/browse/#svn/trunk/util/docs/template%3Fstate%3Dclosed

Perhaps this info is useful to others who might run Mapstraction
hackathons/codelabs.

- pamela
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Thanks Pamela - finally getting to this. we''ll put up these examples  
on the Mapstraction News blog and resources.

How do you run the publish.js to generate docs?

On Dec 7, 2008, at 4:09 AM, pamela fox wrote:
> For OSDC (Open Source Developer''s Conference), we ran a Google  
> hackathon.
>
> One of the topics we covered was open mapping APIs, where I gave a  
> short talk and then we did a few hours of Mapstraction hacking.
>
> The slides for the talk are here:
> http://www.slideshare.net/wuzziwug/open-maps-or-close-enough-presentation/
>
> For the hacking, I gave attendees the following suggestions:
> Structured:
> http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial
> http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial2
> http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial3
> Less Structured: Mappy Brain Age!
> Use bits of code from the original Brain Age app when creating this  
> one (the social bits are largely the same).
> Load the Mapstraction API + Google API into the app (Hint: script  
> append, script onload)
> Initialize the map to the world view.
> Instead of asking random math questions, ask the user to locate  
> random places in the world (see Appendix for sample JSON).
> Award them a correct answer if they''re within a particular
distance
> threshold.
> Sample Solution
>
> Most people did the first option. The guy who did the second option  
> ran into issues with Polygon.
>
> In this function:
>     var gpoints = [];
>     for (var i = 0,  length = this.points.length ; i< length; i++){
>         gpoints.push(this.points[i].toGoogle());
>     }
>     if (this.closed	||  
> this.gpoints[0].equals(this.gpoints[length-1])) {
> this.gpoints should be simply gpoints
>
> There were also various questions about how to put an event listener  
> on the map - it took me a while inspecting the code to figure it out  
> myself. That might be made clearer in an example or the reference.
>
> On that note, the reference is a bit hard to navigate. I''m
probably
> biased from my experience with Google Maps API, but if anyone was  
> interested, you can try generating 1-page Google-style docs. We have  
> some scripts for doing that in our open source lib:
> http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-utility-library-dev/source/browse/ 
> #svn/trunk/util/docs/template%3Fstate%3Dclosed
>
> Perhaps this info is useful to others who might run Mapstraction  
> hackathons/codelabs.
>
> - pamela
> _______________________________________________
> Mapstraction mailing list
> Mapstraction at lists.mapstraction.com
> http://lists.mapstraction.com/listinfo.cgi/mapstraction-mapstraction.com
--
Andrew Turner
mobile: 248.982.3609
email: andrew at highearthorbit.com
blog: http://highearthorbit.com

-- Helping build the Geospatial Web --
http://geocommons.com    ---     http://mapufacture.com
Introduction to Neogeography - http://oreilly.com/catalog/neogeography

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Hey Andrew-

To run it, first make sure you''ve got jsdoc-toolkit checked out as
well. We have it as an svn:externals property, so it gets auto checked
out along with everything else, but from a separate repository. Our
external looks like this:
jsdoc-toolkit -r638 http://jsdoc-toolkit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/jsdoc-toolkit

Then we generate the docs using an ant script (ant all-docs). That
corresponds to this:
<target name="all-docs">
    <foreach param="LIBLOC" target="docs">
      <path>
        <dirset dir="${basedir}" includes="*"
excludes="util"/>
      </path>
    </foreach>
  </target>

<target name="docs" description="Generates reference
documentation.">
    <fileset id="LIBRARY" dir="${LIBLOC}"
includes="src/*.js"
excludes="src/*_packed.js"/>
    <property name="LIBRARY"
refid="LIBRARY"></property>
    <java failonerror="true"
jar="${basedir}/util/docs/jsdoc-toolkit/jsrun.jar"
fork="true">
      <arg
value="${basedir}/util/docs/jsdoc-toolkit/app/run.js"/>
      <arg value="--allfunctions"/>
      <arg value="--verbose"/>
      <arg value="--suppress"/>
      <arg value="--template=${basedir}/util/docs/template/"/>
      <arg value="--directory=${LIBLOC}/docs/"/>
      <arg value="${LIBLOC}/${LIBRARY}"/>
    </java>
  </target>

So if you didn''t want to run it via an ant script, you could just run
it using jsrun.jar and the commands that are passed in (<arg value>).
Let me know if you need more info.

- pamela

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Andrew Turner
<andrew at highearthorbit.com> wrote:
> Thanks Pamela - finally getting to this. we''ll put up these
examples on the
> Mapstraction News blog and resources.
> How do you run the publish.js to generate docs?
> On Dec 7, 2008, at 4:09 AM, pamela fox wrote:
>
> For OSDC (Open Source Developer''s Conference), we ran a Google
hackathon.
> One of the topics we covered was open mapping APIs, where I gave a short
> talk and then we did a few hours of Mapstraction hacking.
> The slides for the talk are here:
> http://www.slideshare.net/wuzziwug/open-maps-or-close-enough-presentation/
>
> For the hacking, I gave attendees the following suggestions:
>
> Structured:
>
> http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial
> http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial2
> http://wholemap.com/blog/mapstraction-tutorial3
>
> Less Structured: Mappy Brain Age!
>
> Use bits of code from the original Brain Age app when creating this one
(the
> social bits are largely the same).
> Load the Mapstraction API + Google API into the app (Hint: script append,
> script onload)
> Initialize the map to the world view.
> Instead of asking random math questions, ask the user to locate random
> places in the world (see Appendix for sample JSON).
> Award them a correct answer if they''re within a particular
distance
> threshold.
> Sample Solution
>
> Most people did the first option. The guy who did the second option ran
into
> issues with Polygon.
> In this function:
>
>     var gpoints = [];
>     for (var i = 0,  length = this.points.length ; i< length; i++){
>         gpoints.push(this.points[i].toGoogle());
>     }
>     if (this.closed	|| this.gpoints[0].equals(this.gpoints[length-1])) {
>
> this.gpoints should be simply gpoints
> There were also various questions about how to put an event listener on the
> map - it took me a while inspecting the code to figure it out myself. That
> might be made clearer in an example or the reference.
>
> On that note, the reference is a bit hard to navigate. I''m
probably biased
> from my experience with Google Maps API, but if anyone was interested, you
> can try generating 1-page Google-style docs. We have some scripts for doing
> that in our open source lib:
>
http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-utility-library-dev/source/browse/#svn/trunk/util/docs/template%3Fstate%3Dclosed
> Perhaps this info is useful to others who might run Mapstraction
> hackathons/codelabs.
> - pamela
> _______________________________________________
> Mapstraction mailing list
> Mapstraction at lists.mapstraction.com
> http://lists.mapstraction.com/listinfo.cgi/mapstraction-mapstraction.com
>
> --
> Andrew Turner
> mobile: 248.982.3609
> email: andrew at highearthorbit.com
> blog: http://highearthorbit.com
> -- Helping build the Geospatial Web --
> http://geocommons.com    ---     http://mapufacture.com
> Introduction to Neogeography - http://oreilly.com/catalog/neogeography
>