[OSM-dev] Name finder for the main OSM page?

[Tom Hughes]

In message <46B31542.2070906 at frankieandshadow.com>
          David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:

> 2. The box on the osm homepage could call the XML interface to the name
> finder, extract the results (which includes the descriptive strings you
> get back now on the name finder page) and go to the lat/lon provided.

This is now in place - in fact the search has been completely reworked
with extra added ajaxiness and the name finder is now one of the sources
it looks at it.

There is now a single search box in the left hand navigation bar and
when something is entered a results pane opens listing the results and
allowing you to jump to one of your choice.

> 3. I could move the name finder to the OSM site. It's written in PHP at
> present and requires its own MySQL database (or at least, its own tables
> in some database); I was considering rewriting in in rails as an
> exercise (and then releasing the code to svn, for which I'd need an
> commit rights), and it might be more appropriate to do this after I;ve
> done a rails port.

This is certainly possible as a future enhancement - it would just be
a question of reworking the search_osm_namefinder method in the goeocoder
controller to work directly instead of calling the XML interface.

> Also, just to say: I am also experimenting on it doing (UK) postcodes as
> well. It could also be made to go off and do the same as at present for
> postcodes in general, allowing us to have a single box.

Adding extra sources is fairly easy - currently it looks for UK postcodes
using the npemap search (which also checks freethepostcode) but adding an
extra source is easy enough.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/