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Ask HN: how do I trace routes in a geospatial db?

3 points by Travis ↗ HN
I had an idea for a little app that would make my friends' lives a little better. I live in a location with street parking, if you know where to park (and when the rules apply; e.g., you can park in commercial zones on Sundays, etc.)

I would like to build dataset of the streets near me with the different parking areas noted.

The problem is that I'm not sure where to begin. I'd like to be able to build something pretty easily in a weekend, and would prefer to not rely on google maps or other hosted solutions.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

4 comments

[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 25.5 ms ] thread
rekky123
Look into: - PostGIS - Mapnik - OpenStreetMap

And prepare to spend more like 20 weekends on this -- it's not a trivial problem. Or, use Google maps and cut that time investment way down.

Mz
GIS is fairly complicated. I have a certificate in it, though I never managed to get a job in GIS due to a health crisis. If you genuinely just want something local to help a few friends, you would probably be better off trying a simpler approach, like a static map with pop up info on when you can park there or something.
mapster
Connecting the db to maps is easy, but building and maintaining such a db is costly, but doable.
quadlock
try leaflet, and if you have a limited amount of data points you may just want to load them with one chunk of json/geojson and forget geospatial querying