On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Sanford Carr wrote:
> I have a database site ( http://artandcraftshows.net ) which allows
> visitors to search for upcoming events by dates, city, state, and
> region. But because many visitors are exhibitors, one of their prime
> concerns is to locate shows within a certain distance of their home
> base.
>
> What I'd like to do is incorporate some method of doing a proximity
> search. That is, to allow searchers to specify something like "within
> 100 miles of Miami, FL" instead of having to use just "in Florida" and
> then try to relate the results to how close to them the shows are.
>
> Anybody got suggestions about how to accomplish this?
I'd assume ZIP codes would be the best geographic tag. The numbering
system tends to correspond to geographic area, and I'm willing to bet
that if you look around there's a pre-packaged set of software that makes
the relationships between them in just the way you need. Get their zip
code, compare it to the surrounding zip codes and give them something
from that range.
Area codes might offer a smaller data set to work with, but they change a
lot more. In some cases (like Wyoming), one area code might cover 8
hours of driving time, though. Probably encounter more problems this way
as well, as "contact" phone numbers for the events will likely often not
be in the same area code as the event itself.
More expensive, but more accurate, would be an actual GIS system tie-in,
where you could have them enter their address and it would actually
measure the distance accurately. One would think this is probably still
a little pricey (unless you could find a CD-based system you could
purchase and perhaps write the locational element of the process yourself).
A few thoughts, anyway . . .
Brett
____________________________________________________________________
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now
Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants
If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done
directly from our website for all our lists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
