Sitecore Google Maps Module
IE is proud to announce the release of our first Sitecore Shared Source module. The module that has been developed by IE to replace the existing Google Maps module written by Timothy Ward in 2009. Whilst the old module has served the community well for many years due to advances in the Google Maps API and Sitecore it has now passed its used by date and desperately needed a re-vamp. Heiko Franz took on the responsibility of creating a Google Maps module that is designed to work in Sitecore 6.5 and has been tested for backwards compatibility in Sitecore 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4.
Module Comparisons
Below is the matrix of the current Google Maps module when compared to the new Google Maps module produced by IE;
The module has been designed from the ground up to be fully customizable from within the Sitecore Editor but if this extended flexibility doesn’t meet the needs for your project a custom sub-layout can be created and the features inherited without having to rebuild the module.
Usability
The new module has been designed and produced from the ground up, this approach has allowed IE to produce a pure open source module were the existing module had used a locked down third party component to work with the Google Maps API. This approach has two major benefits:
- It provides developers with a plug and play module; and
- Allows Sitecore editors to quickly and easily manage there map information using a familiar Sitecore administration interface.
An example of a major improvement in usability for site editors is that the new module features an editing console that provides real-time feedback to the user showing the co-ordinates they have selected and allows editing and updating without requiring the user to save until they are happy with the result.
Source Code
The module was developed to allow the code to be open source with no reliance on any third party components with the exception of Sitecore.
Key features:
- The display layer of the module is written in Javascript allowing easy customisation of the appearance to suit your sites needs.
- Uses the current version of the Google Maps API:
- Removing the need to register an API key and be limited to a single domain
- Providing the flexibility to work with mobile devices such as your iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc.
The source of this module has been deployed into the Sitecore Shared Source Library along with documentation to assist developers and administrators to setup and use the new module, this can be found by going to the Google Maps module page.
4 Comments
7th December 2011
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8th December 2011
Hello,
Thank you very much for this module we currently use the previous version but the API V2 cause some trouble and we have reimplemented some code for this.
I will try the new version very soon
Thank you very much for this
Vangansewinkel Benjamin
26th February 2012
When installed on my local machine this module works like a charm. However, when it is installed on one of my webservers, it only shows a static map. In Sitecore the line ‘ERROR Google Maps Module – Field Type is empty on Normal’ is logged. Do you have any idea what might cause this problem? (it may have something to do with the webserver’s limited connectivity due to firewall restrictions)
Anyway, thank you for sharing this great module!
9th October 2012
Love it!
Would be nice if you by default added a “Title” field to the “Location” template and used that as title for the marker. Now the name of the created node is used and this causes problems with locations with characters like å,ä,ö that is used in swedish. Otherwise great job!!