Google Maps API and Aiport Lat/Long?

CJones

CJones

Final Approach
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uHaveNoIdea
I'm screwing around with Google Maps API to try to post a dynamic map on our website showing where we've flown to, etc. I'm getting a grasp on how to script with the GMaps language, but I'm wondering if anyone has found a place and/or way to get the lat/long for different airports.

Right now, I'm posting static lat/long coords in an XML file and then pulling the info into the map creation script for each of our stored 'trips'. What would be awesome is if I could find a list of airport lat/longs and simply do an ID lookup on the fly instead of having to look up the lat/long every time I want to enter a new trip record.

Any ideas? There's probably already a script/program out there that will build this stuff for you, but I'm trying to get back into a 'programming' frame of mind, so I would like to do the script work myself and steal the data from somewhere else. :)

Jesse? Jason? Mike? Chip? Beuller? Beuller? Anybody?
 
Chris--I have a database (that Chip gave me) with the lat/long for identifiers. I can provide it to you as a MySQL dump or CSV..your choice. If your web host supports PHP / MySQL (any worth a damn do) just import the MySQL dump and query it with a PHP script.
 
jesse said:
Chris--I have a database (that Chip gave me) with the lat/long for identifiers. I can provide it to you as a MySQL dump or CSV..your choice. If your web host supports PHP / MySQL (any worth a damn do) just import the MySQL dump and query it with a PHP script.
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That would be awesome! I figured you had an inside scoop to it somehow. ;) Using MySQL would be good practice, too. :)
 
What is your e-mail address? Better yet--do you use any sort of IM?
 
Jesse,
I have one too as a CSV file, I'd like to compare to yours. And an older ICAO one that goes world wide.

Joe
 
jesse said:
What is your e-mail address? Better yet--do you use any sort of IM?
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I finally got away from IM stuff.. It's too addicting.. And all the people i talked to got older and married and kids and quit using it.. ;)

But back in the day, I was using ICQ before AIM and MSN got big.. back in the good 'ol days.. :yes:
 
CJones said:
I finally got away from IM stuff.. It's too addicting.. And all the people i talked to got older and married and kids and quit using it.. ;)

But back in the day, I was using ICQ before AIM and MSN got big.. back in the good 'ol days.. :yes:
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As was I. ICQ was good back when it was "ICQ 98" but as soon as ICQ 2000 came out--things went to hell.
 
jesse said:
As was I. ICQ was good back when it was "ICQ 98" but as soon as ICQ 2000 came out--things went to hell.
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Yup. That's when all the punk kids started using it. ;)
 
You can get this data directly from the FAA (even updated every 56 days), too.

This is a good starting point:

http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/airports/airport_safety/airportdata_5010/

If you just leave all the form defaults and click Submit, it will take you to a page where you can download various CSV files. The basic info one contains all airports, codes, lat/long, etc. There's some other pretty interesting downloads there, too.

If you need even more detailed data, you could sign up for a free National Flight Data Center login. Their FADDS application has all sorts of up-to-date information. I just noticed that they supposedly even offer MVA charts...I wonder if that's true. I'd love to get those.

Edit: If you don't want to deal with a DB, you could also just look up lat/long by airport code, for example here:

http://nfdc.faa.gov/nasr_lookup/airport_a.jsp?aprtname=koak

The only downside is that this only returns html data, so you'd have to parse it. I'd go with the CSV data and then import it into a DB.

-Felix
 
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sba55- I use the FAA database to load airport info into my non-aviation GPS. I wrote a VBA program to get the data into Mapsource.

You wouldn't have any idea where they keep the NAVAID information? I wind up entering that manually from the AFD.
 
OK.. I have a working "Enter 'Trip Info' (Departure ID, Arrival ID, Date, Description)" page. I also have a working "Load and plot the points on a map" (pulling Lat/Lon from Jesse's database) working. My next step will be to put the pop-up window that includes the ID, City/State, description, and link to our own 'write-up' of the trip. After (or while working on that) I will include a line drawn between each point showing our actual routes flown which will show mileage (point-to-point). That will be the 'base' model.

Once I get that working smoothly and consistently, I hope to add functionality to pull lat/long route coords from FlightAware to show our actual 'flown' route for the routes we actually filed for. This will be shown in the point-to-point line.

I also hope to add connectivity to the FAA database so my ID's are current.

Anything else I should add to the "To Do" list for the project? This is just for our personal webpage, but once I get it working to my liking, I'll be willing to share the code for people to include on their own sites. I'm sure most people that do this stuff could write the code in one night, but it's a good project for me to use to get back into a programming mindset after being out of any type of programming for 5+ years. :hairraise:
 
If you use a GPS, you may consider downloading the track information and displaying it on your Google maps page.
 
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