Meta Box Geolocation

Meta Box Geolocation helps you fill in address fields (street address, zip code, city, state, and country) quickly by using Geocoding API from Google Maps/Open Street Maps.

Configuration

To make the geolocation work, you need to configure 4 things:

• Enable the geolocation API
• Setup the field group settings
• Setup the ID for the address field to make it suggests addresses from geolocation API
• Setup the ID (or binding ID) for other fields to retrieve data from geolocation API when selecting an address

Follow each step below.

Geolocation API

Create a project in the Google Cloud Platform Console, and enable the following APIs:

• Google Maps API
• Geocoding API
• Places API

After that, create an API key for Google Maps. You'll need this key to perform any call to Google Maps platform.

Open Street Maps

If you use Open Street Maps, then you can bypass this step. Open Street Maps doesn't require any configuration.

Field group settings

If you use Open Street Maps, you need to add an Open Street Maps field to your field group. Then add geo to your field group custom settings in the Meta Box Builder like this:

If you use code, then add this line to your field group settings:

'geo' => true,

If you use Google Maps, it's not required to add a Google Maps field to your field group. To enable geolocation, add the following custom settings in the field group settings in the Meta Box Builder like this:

If you use code, then add this line to your field group settings:

'geo' => [
    'api_key' => 'YOUR API KEY',
],

info

If you have a Google Maps field in your field group, then you can set the Google API key once, either for the Geolocation extension (as above) or for the map field. No need to enter the same key for both of them.

You can also add options to Geolocation, which can contains these properties:

• types: array of geocode types:
  • geocode: only geocoding results, no business results.
  • address: only geocoding results with a precise address.
  • establishment: business results.
  • (cities): only results that match either locality or administrative_area3.
  • (regions): any result matching the following types:
    • locality
    • sublocality
    • postal_code
    • country
    • administrative_area1
    • administrative_area2
• componentRestrictions: restrict results to a specific country, must be ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 compatible country code. You can find code information at Wikipedia: List of ISO 3166 country codes.

Examples:

// Restrict the result in Australia only
'geo' => [
    'api_key' => 'YOUR API KEY',
    'componentRestrictions' => [
        'country' => 'au'
    ],
],

// Return only business results
'geo' => [
    'api_key' => 'YOUR API KEY',
    'types' => ['establishment'],
],

// Return only cities and business results
'geo' => [
    'api_key' => 'YOUR API KEY',
    'types' => ['(cities)', 'establishment'],
],

Address field

The address field is used to retrieve the suggestions from the Geolocation API. To add an address field, add a text field with an ID that starts with address (like address or address_something)...

Other fields

When you select an address from autocomplete list, the geolocation API will return a list of address components. To make the field retrieve the data, set the field's ID the same as one of the address components.

For example, if you create a text field with ID locality, when you select an address, the city of the address will be filled into this text field.

Here is the list of components for Google Maps:

Component	Description
street_address	indicates a precise street address.
route	indicates a named route (such as "US 101").
intersection	indicates a major intersection, usually of two major roads.
political	indicates a political entity. Usually, this type indicates a polygon of some civil administration.
country	indicates the national political entity and is typically the highest order type returned by the Geocoder.
administrative_area_level_1	indicates a first-order civil entity below the country level. Within the United States, these administrative levels are states. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels.
administrative_area_level_2	indicates a second-order civil entity below the country level. Within the United States, these administrative levels are counties. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels.
administrative_area_level_3	indicates a third-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels.
administrative_area_level_4	indicates a fourth-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels.
administrative_area_level_5	indicates a fifth-order civil entity below the country level. This type indicates a minor civil division. Not all nations exhibit these administrative levels.
colloquial_area	indicates a commonly-used alternative name for the entity.
locality	indicates an incorporated city or town political entity.
sublocality	indicates a first-order civil entity below a locality. Some locations may receive one of the additional types: sublocality_level_1 through to sublocality_level_5. Each sublocality
neighborhood	indicates a named neighborhood.
premise	indicates a named location, usually a building or collection of buildings with a common name
subpremise	indicates the first-order entity below a named location, usually a singular building within a collection of buildings with a common name.
postal_code	indicates a postal code as used to address postal mail within the country.
natural_feature	indicates a prominent natural feature.
airport	indicates an airport.
park	indicates a named park.
post_box	indicates a specific postal box.
street_number	indicates the precise street number.
floor	indicates the floor of a building address.
room	indicates the room of a building address.
lat	indicates latitude of the result
lng	indicates longitude of the result
geometry	same as latitude,longitude
formatted_address	returns human-readable complete address
id	unique id of current location
url	url of current location
opening_hours	Opening hours
phone	Phone number
formatted_phone_number	Formatted phone number
international_phone_number	International phone number
website	Website URL
rating	Rating value
user_ratings_total	Total number of ratings by users

For more information about address components visit: Google Address Component Types

Here are the address components for Open Street Maps:

Component	Description
building	Building address
house_number	House number
aeroway	Aeroway
road	Road address
neighbourhood	Neighbourhood
suburb	Suburb
village	Village
town	Town
city	City
county	County
state	State
postcode	Postcode
country	Country
country_code	Country code

Advanced

Sometimes you don't want the fields to have the exact ID as the address components, or if you want to combine multiple components into one field, then follow the guides below.

Long and short names

Let's say we have a country named 'Australia'. The long name is 'Australia' and the short name is 'AU'. If we have a state named 'Queensland', 'Queensland' is the long name and 'QLD' is the short name.

By default, Meta Box Geolocation will populate the long name of the field. But you can use the short name by adding _short at the end of field ID. For example: administrative_area_level_1_short, country_short.

caution

This feature is available for Google Maps only.

Custom binding

Let's say we have a field with id dummy_field, this field ID is not in the address component list so the plugin won't auto-populate data to it. To make the plugin auto-populate data (administrative_area_level_1) to that field, add the following parameter to the field:

With Meta Box Builder:

or with code:

'binding' => 'administrative_area_level_1', // returns 'Queensland'

You can tell that field to use the short version by prepending the short: keyword:

'binding' => 'short:administrative_area_level_1', // returns 'QLD'

You can also merge two fields, and add any character you want to bind to that field. Like so:

'binding' => 'city + " " + country', // returns QLD Australia

Multiple addresses

In case you have multiple "groups" of address fields, such as address details for head office and address details for a company branch. In each group, there is an autocomplete address field. And it will auto-populate only fields in the group, e.g. the address for head office only populates the fields in the head office group, not in the company branch.

In this case, please set another attribute 'address_field' => 'address_id' for each field in the group. See an example code below:

If you do with code, then your field group looks like this:

/**
 * Head office
 */

// Address
[
    'id' => 'address_ho',
    'name' => 'Address - Head Office',
],
// City
[
    'id' => 'city_ho',
    'name' => 'City - Head Office',
    'binding' => 'locality',
    'address_field' => 'address_ho',
],

/**
 * A company branch
 */

// Address
[
    'id' => 'address_br',
    'name' => 'Address - Branch',
],
// City
[
    'id' => 'city_br',
    'name' => 'City - Branch',
    'binding' => 'locality',
    'address_field' => 'address_br',
],

Two-way data binding

If you have a map field, then whenever you change an address or manually change the value of latitude and longitude fields, the pin on the map will change according to the new location.

And whenever you change the pin location, the latitude and longitude will change (if you have these fields).

However, if you change the pin location, the address field will NOT change.