MapSearch functionality
This page gives an overview of what you can do with the MapSearch plugin or widget. For technical information how to use the MapSearch plugin, check this page
Basic concept
The RouteYou RouteFinder is an example (and built on top of) the MapSearch. Try it out here, or read the documentation to get a good understanding of what it does. Also the Location or POI Search is an example of the MapSearch in the RouteYou.
But this MapSearch is a tool you can also use in your own website, using the MapSearch plugin.
The basic concept of the MapSearch is to show you a selection of routes and/or POIs on a map.
- The selection criteria can be very simple : e.g. all routes of RouteYou in the map-box you see
- Or they can be can be very advanced: e.g. routes of user x, in this area, of the type recreational walk, with characteristic "child friendly" and theme "architecture" and belonging to a group you created yourself)
The MapSearch contains three main building blocks:
- The map: on this map, the selection of routes are displayed in a clustered or non-clustered way (read more about clustering here)
- The list: the list shows you the selection of routes and or POIs in list form
- The selector: this is an optional block where the user can enter or indicate the criteria. This can be dropped if the goal is just to show a simple overview of a selection of routes or POIs.
Take it a step further
- It is very easy to show content of one specific user as we do on our user pages
- It is very easy to display POIs of a certain area and/or based on a selction criterium
- You can compeltely integrate it in your style of site and build your own search interface (selector) and link it to the MapSearch
The next step
The next step (or goal) is that the user selects one of the routes or places of interest and gets to the Route or Location page (as implemented on RouteYou). But also this behaviour is easy to implement on your site, because you can configure the target page in the MapSearch when a route or POI is selected (and that could be a page on your website). And on that page, you can implement another plugin of RouteYou: the RouteViewer plugin or the PoiViewer plugin. You can find the technical information here.