[OSM-dev] Clickable POIs and simple POI 'wiki'

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello everyone,

As part of some Freemap enhancements I've been working on the last two days or 
so, I've implemented (in PHP) a simple point-of-interest 'wiki' together with 
a simple API for performing operations on a PostGIS OSM database. This is 
operational on Freemap currently (www.free-map.org.uk); however the code is 
sufficiently generic that it could potentially be used in any planet-derived 
OSM postgis database, and thus any OSM mapping site running on a server which 
supports PHP.

The main features include:

* a simple 'wiki' system (not a true wiki as it does not store revision 
history). People can write, and update, pages on points of interest; these 
are stored in the Postgis database and linked to OSM nodes by ID. (Yes, I'm 
aware IDs could change, but this is somewhat unlikely so this eventuality has 
not been covered yet). You can see this in operation by selecting "Nearby 
points of interest" on Freemap. No login is required yet though this may 
later become a requirement.

* clickable POIs (this was already present on Freemap; but the code is 
sufficiently generic to run on any planet/postgis-based OSM site)

* a simple API, allowing lookup of points of interest by ID; locating the 
closest "n" POIs to a particular point; and searching POIs by name.

Does this look interesting to people? Any suggestions/improvements?
If there's sufficient interest I'll package the code up so it's completely 
independent of Freemap. Meantime the source is available as part of Freemap:

http://www.free-map.org.uk/downloads/freemap-150308.tar.bz2

Nick