IKEA – store locator app

Written on 19 February 2012, 12:19am

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I put together a small app using the following technologies:

I spent some time adding addresses of IKEA stores from some European countries into a Google Fusion table. Then I used the Google API to display the stores on map, as an overlay, with a country filter. I also used the HTML5 geolocation capabilities to show the nearest IKEA store. Additionally, I provided the user the option to search for the nearest IKEA store from any given location.
As I said before, I used the Bootstrap user interface, along with jQuery.

At this moment, the current version is 0.8. I will make the roadmap public shortly, but the idea is to include all the European stores in the version 1.0. Also, the version 2.0 will include a separate data source (in addition to the Fusion table) and, depending on the application popularity, a public web service + API to retrieve the data. Of course, I planned to make this app scalable enough to be used with any set of geographical points – not necessarily IKEA stores 🙂

So, here it is:


Comments (10)

  1. Muhammad Qasim — April 14, 2012 at 23:33

    Hi, This is a really good app. Have you thought of optimising it for mobile and is it possible to release the code (if possible, with tutorial) so people like me can also learn.

    Regards

    Reply

  2. Dorin M — April 19, 2012 at 11:52

    About optimising for mobile – yes, it’s on the list for the release 2.0.
    About releasing the code – except for the tiny part containing the back-end integration (called via ajax), everything it’s really under your eyes. The JS code is not minified, though it lacks the comment verbosity. I will try to fix this in the 2.0 release.
    Check back soon for the next release, it’s quite different from the current one!

    Reply

  3. Muhammad Qasim — April 22, 2012 at 21:46

    Hi, thanks. I will keep checking back. Is it possible to add data from an xml file instead of a database?

    Reply

  4. Dorin M — April 23, 2012 at 22:00

    The short answer is yes, it is possible.
    However, please note that you need to find a way to query the xml (example – to get the locations by country or to get nearest location). Fusion tables are a great way to do this.

    Reply

  5. Muhammad Qasim — April 24, 2012 at 11:36

    Hi, Fusion tables looks like the better option. Obviously it is possible to set cities instead of countries right?

    So for example find closest Tesco in London.

    Reply

  6. Dorin M — April 24, 2012 at 11:45

    Yes, of course.

    Reply

  7. sandra — May 28, 2012 at 21:01

    this looks really nice and very similar to what I want to do.
    can you tell us/show us the code or how you did it step by step?
    or do you have a good list of links that we can click on that step us through?

    Reply

  8. mandy — July 11, 2012 at 14:29

    Can you share the code? It is really nice app. I am working one something similiar, but cannot find sample code to start with.

    Reply

    • Dorin M — July 11, 2012 at 22:08

      The code is already there. See my comment #2

      Reply

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