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Show HN: Gridtalk - Leave comments anywhere on Earth (Flask + MapTiler) (gridtalk.xyz)

10 points by rh3939 ↗ HN
I've created a Flask app that allows users to add and view comments tied to specific locations on a map. Here is how it works

1. Users can browse a world map and leave comments at any location.

2. Comments become visible when a user's cursor is within 50m of the comment's coordinates

3. Ideal for sharing local insights, tourist tips, restaurant recommendations, etc. It's also ideal for shitposting.

I built this over the course of a few hours as demo to help me learn to how deploy a flask application using digital ocean droplets. I have listed the tech stack below

- SQLite

- Flask

- AlpineJS

- Digital ocean droplet.

- MapTiler

It's missing SSL so I will fix that at some point as I want to figure out how to do that. Bot protection would also be good to figure out as well as a better system for displaying comments. Overall droplets are a nice way to deploy stuff and much cheaper than using Vercel(Nothing new there!)

2 comments

[ 6.6 ms ] story [ 22.3 ms ] thread
pmdulaney
How come I don't see any comments already there on the map?
rh3939
I have gotten that feedback a few times so I will have to fix this. Essentially the reason you don’t see any comments is that nobody has commented on that location yet. I should have probably pre-populated different areas but it’s quite awkward to pull in information based on long and lat coordinates without relying on paid apis like google places api or foursquare places api which can get quite expensive.Perhaps there is an easier way to scrape certain sites but then again it’s a bit complicated to match that scraped data to a long & lat coordinate. I am experimenting with adding the ability to have a dynamic link which updates based on long & lat coordinates which will then open a perplexity search query for stuff in that area(which is free) and possibly a notes section where you can add notes(trip planning etc) that are saved in local storage. I want to keep this entirely free to use and minimal cost for me to host. If you have any recommendations I would love to hear them. Thanks- R