The sheer volume of sites in Seattle has revealed a few bugs that I’ve corrected and submitted to the App Store today (v1.22). If you’re having issues with interminable crashes, we’re sorry! Please delete the app and download it again (and/or update when the new version comes out). Hopefully this fix will get approved quickly!

Thanks!

Victor

Thanks!

-Victor
(of Tot a Go Go ~ find and map diaper changing stations, indoor play areas, and high chairs throughout the world).

Get ready to find, map, and review places with baby diaper changing stations, indoor play areas, and other baby-friendly amenities!

Don’t forget to post your feedback about the iPhone App on the forums here!

For this app, I needed a way for users to add new locations to the map by entering in only the name or address of the business / location (in much the same way that you can enter in the name of a business in the native iPhone / iOS ‘Maps’ App). I needed to map a latitude and longitude (or a geocode) to an address or place name. The iOS SDK includes a reverse geocoder (converts a location to an address), but no forward geocoder, so I figure that this project is likely to be useful to others.

There were a few possible candidates for this task, but I had fairly stringent criteria:

1. It must be extremely inexpensive.
2. It must be free.
3. Accuracy, completeness, speed, and reliability wouldn’t hurt.
4. A RESTful interface with JSON encoded response would be nice (whatever that means).
5. Ease of use is always nice.
6. The service must not have any cost.

This limited my choices to two possibilities:

1. Google Local Search.
2. Yahoo! Local Search.

I ended up trying both, and although the Yahoo! Local Search actually seemed to produce more complete and more accurate results in my limited testing, I went with Google because its EULA was much less restrictive. Unfortunately, the Google API will be deprecated in about 3 years (Nov 2013) — hopefully, there will be a better alternative by then!

A Simple Way To Use the Google Local Search API with the iPhone / iOS SDK

If you’re new to programming the iPhone, you might want to read this whole post. Otherwise if you’re more experienced, just go straight to my github repository, read the README, download the Google Local Search iOS Objective-C code, and start geocoding!

If you want to see a step by step guide to setting this up in a very simple iPhone app, read on…

1. Download, install, and open XCode. Start a new iPhone “View-based application” project. Name it “LocalSearch”.
2. Go to the menu item “Project” -> Edit Active Target “LocalSearch”
3. Go to the “General” tab at the top (if it’s not already open), then click the plus sign. Add both the MapKit.framework and the CoreLocation.framework to your project. This will allow you to easily use Google Maps in your app. Close that window.
4. Make sure the top line “LocalSearch” is highlighted under “Groups & Files” on the left. Click on LocalSearchViewController.h in the list of files that should appear somewhere towards the top / middle of the screen.
5. Now replace the contents of LocalSearchViewController.h with the following:

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h> #import <MapKit/MapKit.h> #import <CoreLocation/CoreLocation.h> #import "GoogleLocalConnection.h"   @class GoogleLocalObject;   @interface LocalSearchViewController : UIViewController <UISearchBarDelegate, MKMapViewDelegate, GoogleLocalConnectionDelegate> { UISearchBar *searchBar; MKMapView *mapView; GoogleLocalConnection *googleLocalConnection; }   @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet UISearchBar *searchBar; @property (nonatomic, retain) IBOutlet MKMapView *mapView;   @end

6. Now go to my Google-Local-Search-iOS github repository and click Downloads. Download either the zip or tar.gz archive and unzip it (if it’s not automatically unzipped). Open the directory containing the files in Finder, highlight all the files with Command-A, then rearrange the window so it’s on top of XCode. Drag the files onto the “Classes” folder of XCode. Make sure that “copy items into the destination group’s folder (if needed)” is checked. Click ‘add’.
7. Now do the same with stig’s JSON framework. Get the files from github and drag the files in the unzipped “Classes” folder into “Classes” in your XCode project.
8. Now replace the contents of LocalSearchViewController.m with the following:

#import "LocalSearchViewController.h" #import "GoogleLocalObject.h" #import "GTMNSString+URLArguments.h"   @implementation LocalSearchViewController   @synthesize mapView, searchBar;   - (void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; [mapView setShowsUserLocation:YES]; [mapView setRegion:MKCoordinateRegionMake(CLLocationCoordinate2DMake(47.6064, -122.3308), MKCoordinateSpanMake(0.5, 0.5))]; [mapView setDelegate:self]; [searchBar setDelegate:self]; googleLocalConnection = [[GoogleLocalConnection alloc] initWithDelegate:self]; }   - (void)searchBarSearchButtonClicked:(UISearchBar *)sBar { [sBar resignFirstResponder]; [googleLocalConnection getGoogleObjectsWithQuery:sBar.text andMapRegion:[mapView region] andNumberOfResults:8 addressesOnly:YES andReferer:@"http://WWW.CHANGETHISTOYOURSITENAME.COM"]; }   - (void) googleLocalConnection:(GoogleLocalConnection *)conn didFinishLoadingWithGoogleLocalObjects:(NSMutableArray *)objects andViewPort:(MKCoordinateRegion)region { if ([objects count] == 0) { UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"No matches found near this location" message:@"Try another place name or address (or move the map and try again)" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles: nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; } else { id userAnnotation=mapView.userLocation; [mapView removeAnnotations:mapView.annotations]; [mapView addAnnotations:objects]; if(userAnnotation!=nil) [mapView addAnnotation:userAnnotation]; [mapView setRegion:region]; } }   - (void) googleLocalConnection:(GoogleLocalConnection *)conn didFailWithError:(NSError *)error { UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Error finding place - Try again" message:[error localizedDescription] delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles: nil]; [alert show]; [alert release]; }   - (void)viewDidUnload { [googleLocalConnection release]; }   - (void)dealloc { [super dealloc]; [mapView setDelegate:nil]; [mapView release]; [searchBar setDelegate:nil]; [searchBar release]; }   @end

9. In the above file, change the capitalized text (WWW.CHANGETHISTOYOURSITENAME.COM) to the name of your site.
10. Save all edited files using Command-Option-S.
11. Double click the LocalSearchViewController.xib file. This will open up Interface Builder. Find a “Map View” in the Library and drag it onto the View window so it is centered. Next, find a “Search Bar” in the Library and drag it onto the very top of the Map View. Right click on the “File’s Owner.” Click on the open circle to the right of mapView and drag a line to the Map View you just dragged onto the View. Then click on the open circle to the right of searchBar and drag a line to the Search Bar you just dragged onto the top of the View. Now hit Command-S to save.

That’s it! Now you should be able to run the simple app in the iOS Simulator. Type in a place name or address, and if Google Local Search knows about it, it should appear on the map! More info about the returned Google Local Object that you can use in your app is available at the github repository for Google-Local-Search-iOS.

Not only will parents of young children be able to find and map the locations of diaper changing stations, but they’ll also be able to review the family-friendliness of locations and add information about highchairs and indoor play areas. It’s very exciting! Tell your friends!