Extract location coordinates and description from GoogleAPI

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1. Obtain Google API Credentials:

• Using Google Cloud Console, create API Key for project.
• Enable the following APIs: Places API and Geocoding API

2. Backend Implementation:

• Set up backend routes and controllers to handle API requests.
• Install the necessary packages to make HTTP requests in your backend.
• Store Google API credentials securely in your backend configuration (environment variables).

3. Fetch Location Coordinates (Places API):

• Implement a backend route to fetch place coordinates using the Places API.
• In the backend controller, make an HTTP GET request to the Places API endpoint with the place name and city
• Parse the response and extract the latitude and longitude coordinates.
• Return the coordinates as the API response.

4. Further response interests:

• Ratings of place
• Opening hours

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Using Places API, searching for Tim Hortons in Vancouver for example:

• We are able to get lat, long and street address with Places API call, hence Geocode API isn't required

What we can use:

• We could extract type of establishment to help with choosing icons for the pins on the map
• User ratings and price level information are also available (price level can be used to determine tier of spending for location to help us with budget estimates for user)

Further considerations:

• With chain businesses, we will need to come up with a solution to only present 1 location on our Map view.
  • E.g., from the image, there are 20 Tim Horton's in Vancouver

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Documentation here

Sample GET request:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/place/textsearch/json?query=Tim%20Hortons%20Vancouver&inputtype=textquery&fields=formatted_address%2Cname%2Crating%2Copening_hours%2Cgeometry&key=YOUR_KEY