Web app integration of OpentStreetMap

General talk
1

Hi,

Great looking map app!

I’m comparing online map dbs/apis/etc for integration into an app to be launched inside 3 months from now, and openstreetmap looks very attractive - mostly due to its openness.

Could anyone please help me choose it (and contribute map data back - hopefully - via a post-launch user base=) by answering some simple questions:

  1. Can anyone point to existing web apps integrating openstreetmap?
  2. Anyone with experience in integration - can you comment on the api, flexibility issues, doc’s, etc?
  3. Are there any scaling issues we should be concerned about eg is there a limit to commercial use of openstreetmaps, etc?

My integration goals are quite simple at the moment - just allow a user to enter a location down to street level.

Typically user would choose location with assistance of a map, by clicking it and seeing data enter form fields to side of map, or they can enter fields first with strict autocomplete validating against map data and showing form data entries sum to location on map.

Down the line I’d love the users to update map data too to help your cool software and community grow!

I hope you can help me choose opentstreetmap,

thanks!

2

existing web apps integrating openstreetmap? List of OSM based Services might give you some inspiration. That’s by no means a complete list. Many more website use OpenStreetMap. Some of these provide their source code, although often you’ll be interested in what’s happening in the javascript (just do ‘view source’)

Speaking of javascript. If you want to embed a “slippy map” on your site, you might want to look at using OpenLayers or Web Maps Lite. These allow you to repond to click events, e.g. to create a simple form for capturing a latitude/longitude the user clicks on.

“autocomplete validating against map data” sounds a little more tricky. You’d need to query against a database of expected inputs perhaps built from a planet download. It’s a LOT of data, so autocomplete would require some ajax style look-ups. Can’t think of any examples of this. http://osmdoc.com does some ajax look-ups when you search for tags …but not on street names