CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sqljson
Cam Connor
Cam Connor

Reputation: 1231

What is the best way to store a google maps path (array of lattitude and longitudes)

I am making a website where users can create routes on google maps and I have been looking around for the best way to store a path (the coordinates of there root) from google maps. I have found a few different options and I am not sure which is the best.

Should I

Store them in a JSON file then just store the path of the json file in a sql column? The only problem with that is I then cant make querys based off the coordinates in the json file.

or

Store every single latitude and Longitude point in a separate row? The only problem I see with this is one path on google maps could have over 1000 different points which would take up a lot of space in the database.

Any other ideas?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1741

Answers (1)

juergen d
juergen d

Reputation: 204756

Store the points seperate in a table like this

coordinates table
-----------------
track_id
lng
lat
sequence_number --> you should also store a sequence to know the order in which you want to connect the coordinates

and another table containing the track info

tracks table
------------
id
name
other_stuff

If you then want to get all points of a track called My Bicycle Tour then run

select c.lng, c.lat, c.sequence
from coordinates c
join tracks t on t.id = c.track_id
where t.name = 'My Bicycle Tour'
order by c.sequence

Remember a DB can easily hold millions and even billions of records and with proper indexes this is also very fast to query.

Upvotes: 3

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