Google Geolocation Bundle for Symfony2

Overview

A Symfony 2 bundle for the Google Geocoding API service.

Requirements

• PHP 5.3+

Dependancies

• Buzz

Installation

1. Add bundle and Buzz library dependancy to vendor dir:

   • Using vendors script

     Add the following to the deps file:

       [Buzz]
           git=git://github.com/kriswallsmith/Buzz.git
           target=/Buzz
     
       [GoogleGeolocationBundle]
           git=git://github.com/dsyph3r/GoogleGeolocationBundle.git
           target=/bundles/Google/GeolocationBundle
     

     Run the vendors script:

       $ php bin/vendors install
     

   • Using git submodules:

       $ git submodule add git://github.com/kriswallsmith/Buzz.git vendor/Buzz
       $ git submodule add git://github.com/dsyph3r/GoogleGeolocationBundle.git vendor/bundles/Google/GeolocationBundle
     

2. Add the Google and Network namespace to your autoloader:

    // app/autoload.php
    $loader->registerNamespaces(array(
        // ..
        'Buzz'      => __DIR__.'/../vendor/Buzz/lib',
        'Google'    => __DIR__.'/../vendor/bundles',
    ));
   

3. Add bundle to application kernel:

    // app/ApplicationKernel.php
    public function registerBundles()
    {
        return array(
            // ...
            new Google\GeolocationBundle\GoogleGeolocationBundle(),
        );
    }
   

Usage

The bundle provides a service available via the google_geolocation.geolocation_api identifier.

To retrieve the service from the container:

$geo = $this->get('google_geolocation.geolocation_api');

Basic usage

To find an address:

$geolocationApi = $this->get('google_geolocation.geolocation_api');
$location = $geolocationApi->locateAddress("Wales, UK");

if ($location->getMatches() > 0)
{
    $matches = json_decode($location->getResult(), true);
    
    // Get address components [city, country, postcode, etc] for 1st match
    $components = $location->getAddressComponents(0);
    
    // Get LatLng for 2nd match
    $latLng = $location->getLatLng(1);
}

Additional Usage

The service can be used in 2 ways:

1. Without the caching layer (default)
2. With the caching layer

Without the caching layer

The service is configured by default to not use the caching layer.

With the caching layer

The caching layer provides a cache of previous requests made to the Google Geocoding API to reduce the number of requests required for the service. It also allows limiting of requests made to the service. Both of these features are useful if you heavily use the Google Geocoding API.

To enable the use of the caching layer you need to configure the service. Update the config at app/config/config.yml with the following:

services:
    google_geolocation.geolocation_api:
        class:      %google_geolocation.geolocation_api.class%
        calls:
            - [ setEntityManager, [ @doctrine.orm.entity_manager ] ]
            - [ setDailyLimit, [ %google_geolocation.geolocation_api.daily_limit% ] ]
            - [ setCacheLifetime, [ %google_geolocation.geolocation_api.cache_lifetime% ] ]

The defaults for the paramaters are as follows:

google_geolocation.geolocation_api.daily_limit: 2500    # Daily requests
google_geolocation.geolocation_api.cache_lifetime: 24   # Hours

Clearing the cache

The cache should be cleaned periodically to comply with the Google terms of service (see below)

Run the following task:

$ php app/console google:geolocation:clean-cache

TODO

• Explore use of Zend Caching layer instead of DB - Zend caching provides a SQLite option which would be useful for some projects.

Google Terms of Service

Please respect the terms of service (TOS) specified by Google for use of the Geocoding API.

The Geocoding API service must only be used in conjunction with a Google Map. The caching feature provided by the bundle is for temporary caching use in order to enhance the user experience when using Geocoding (This is permitted by the TOS). You should run the clean cache task periodically to clean up the cache values. The lifetime of each Geocoding result can be set via the paramater google_geolocation.geolocation_api.cache_lifetime. By default this is set to 24 hours