[wp-hackers] Geodata storage

[Dougal Campbell]

On Jun 4 2010 5:45 PM, Michael D Adams wrote:
> I'd like to see all WP geo data stored the same way and in the same
> place.  That way geodata stored by one plugin can be used by another,
> by the WordPress mobile apps currently out in the wild, or any new
> thing that comes out in the future.
>
> I've put up a Codex page with the schema the WordPress mobile apps
> use: http://codex.wordpress.org/Geodata
>
> Here's the meat of it:
>    

Just catching up on some things, and thought I'd toss in some thoughts....

First of all, having a standard for geodata will be great. I've always 
been interested in geolocation apps, even if I don't do all that much 
with it in practice. I'm curious why you decided to store the lat and 
long values in separate entries? Seems like it would be extremely rare 
that you'd need one value without the other. I think a "lat, long" pair 
would be convenient, storage wise, even though you'd have to parse it 
out later.

Also, are there any thoughts on standardizing storage for structured 
location data? Since geo_address is free-form, it will be pretty much 
impossible to parse reliably. It might be nice to standardize a 
separate, serialized field ('geo_location'?) which could contain 
separate fields for address, locality, country, postal code, etc. There 
are plenty of prior-art examples to draw from. I'd probably start with 
the adr microformat:

   http://microformats.org/wiki/adr

-- 
Dougal Campbell <dougal at gunters.org>
http://dougal.gunters.org/
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