Meta Box Geolocation

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

auto suggest geolocation data

Enabling geolocation API

If you use Open Street Maps, then you can bypass this step. Open Street Maps doesn’t require any extra API/configuration from you.

If you use Google Maps, create a project for Google Maps in the Google Cloud Platform Console. And don’t forget to enable the following APIs:

  • Google Maps API
  • Geocoding API
  • Places API

And then create an API key for Google Maps. See here for instruction. You’ll need this key to perform any call to Google Maps platform.

Enable geolocation support for a meta box

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

enable geolocation for open street maps

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:

enable geolocation for google maps

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

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

If you has 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.

If you use Google Maps, 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'],
],

Adding autocomplete field

To add an auto complete field. Simply add a text field and set it id starts with address. Like address or address_something… The plugin will treat that field as auto complete address field.

You can add auto complete to textarea, it works but will generate warning messages.

Populating field data

Address components

When you select an address from autocomplete field, it returns an array of address components. Which you can use it to populate to other fields. The following components are supported by 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. For some locations may receive one of the additional types: sublocality_level_1 through to sublocality_level_5. Each sublocality level is a civil entity. Larger numbers indicate a smaller geographic area.
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  

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

Add here are the address components supported by Open Street Maps (which are self-explained):

  • building
  • house_number
  • aeroway
  • road
  • neighbourhood
  • suburb
  • village
  • town
  • city
  • county
  • state
  • postcode
  • country
  • country_code

Auto populate

To auto populate data to the field. Just set that field’s ID same as one of address component above. For example, you create a number field with ID postal_code. The postal code type will auto populate to that field if exists.

Long name and short name

Let’s say we have a country named ‘Australia’. The long name is ‘Australia’ and short name is ‘AU’. And so on, if we have a state named ‘Queensland’, so ‘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.

Please note that this feature is available for Google Maps only.

Binding template

The power of Meta Box Geolocation is you can bind anything into a field. Let’s say we have a field with id dummy_field, this field id is not in address component list so by default the plugin won’t auto populate data to it. Now we’ll bind administrative_area_level_1 to that field. Just add

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

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

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

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

'binding' => 'short:administrative_area_level_1 + " " + country', // returns QLD Australia

Multiple autocomplete addresses

In case you have multiple “group” of address fields, such as address details for head office and address details for a company branch. In each group, there are an autocomplete address field. And it will autopopulate 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:

/**
 * Head office
 */

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

/**
 * A company branche
 */

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

Two-way binding data with map

If you have map field, then whenever you select an address, the pin on the map will change according to the new location. And whenever you change the location of the pin on the map, the new location will be updated to the latitude, longitude fields (if you have them). Moreover, the pin on the map will automatically populated when you change the value of latitude and longitude fields.

So the location is synchronize between address, latitude/longitude and map fields.

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