# Google maps plugin, which one? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [February 28, 2007, 12:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129 "2007-02-28T12:53:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/RJRJRJ)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 12:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129/1 "2007-02-28T12:53:33Z")
Hi all. I am going to be integrating google maps into a site I am doing. All it will be is a simple map with markers (and maybe marker groups). Nothing more complex than that. I have been googling around for rails plugins and it appears that there are two that look pretty good. Cartographer - [http://cartographer.rubyforge.org/](http://cartographer.rubyforge.org/) and YM4R - [thepochisuperstarmegashow.com](http://thepochisuperstarmegashow.com/projects/#ym4r) From what I can tell it looks like Cartpgrapher is simpler in terms of setup and functionality (which could be a benefit here) but I was wondering if anyone had any real-world experience with them both and could recommend one over the other. Cheers RJ ---
**Author:** ![RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/RJRJRJ)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2007, 3:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129/2 "2007-02-28T15:47:43Z")
Hi RJ, I recently switched from Cartographer to YM4R/GM. I considered YM4R/ Mapstraction as well, but decided to go with just /GM since it seems more lightweight (i.e. less JS) and has more features for specifically for GM. Cartographer is not maintained as far as I could tell and it predates Rails 1.0. Honestly, I liked the API for Cartographer much better as it seemed to flow with the usual Rails conventions, whereas YM4R is full of init\_ methods and you have to call more of them instead of cleanly passing a hash parameter to a single method… I also found the API key handling to be easier on Mapstraction. I had to write some request\_uri.gsub magic to get it to find the right key in YM4R when I have maps in more than one directory. (Google takes / maps without the trailing slash and /maps/ to be different directories so you need two keys…) Why did I switch? I had a _very_ strange bug with Mapstraction where the whole Rails stack would seem to get corrupted after clicking to a map page that created map markers for some of my models. Any subsequent request would totally lose associations between models: “association named ‘Address’ not found, perhaps you misspelled it?” This would affect all other pages in my app, even breaking associations not related to mapping until I restarted the server. I actually updated my app from 1.1.6 to 1.2 out of desperation since I couldn’t tell what was causing this–even integration tests to simulate my clicking through the app wouldn’t show the problem. So, eventually I narrowed it down to Cartographer and after banging my head on the wall for a couple weeks thinking there must be some fundamental bug in my code, I removed Cartographer. –Andrew ---
**Author:** ![RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/RJRJRJ)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 11:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129/3 "2007-03-01T11:28:38Z")
werdnativ wrote: > Correcting myself… > > > I also found the API key handling to be easier on Mapstraction. > > > Why did I switch? I had a _very_ strange bug with Mapstraction > > I meant to write Cartographer (…not Mapstraction) Many thanks werdnativ for detaling your real world experience, I was learning towards YM4R anyway but having looked into it further I will use YM4R with geospatial and georuby as I am going to be working with images taken on GPS enabled cameras and these plugisn combined should make things easier. RJ ---
**Author:** ![RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/RJRJRJ)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 7:28am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129/4 "2007-03-01T07:28:21Z")
Correcting myself… > I also found the API key handling to be easier on Mapstraction. > Why did I switch? I had a _very_ strange bug with Mapstraction I meant to write Cartographer (…not Mapstraction) ---
**Author:** ![RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/RJRJRJ)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2007, 6:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129/5 "2007-03-02T18:08:52Z")
On Feb 28, 2007, at 6:53 AM, RJ wrote: > From what I can tell it looks like Cartpgrapher is simpler in terms of > setup and functionality (which could be a benefit here) but I was > wondering if anyone had any real-world experience with them both and > could recommend one over the other. I’ve used YM4R\_Mapstraction and been very pleased with it. While I primarily work with google maps it’s nice to know I could easily switch over to another mapping system should I need to. I wrote up my experience a few months ago at: > **[Abstracting mapping with YM4R](https://jystewart.net/2006/09/01/abstracting-mapping-with-ym4r/)** > > When Grand Rapids WiFi–then a PHP application–first implemented google map support all the logic for producing those maps came in the templates. The controller passed the view a list of… with-ym4r/ James. – James S. Play: [http://james.anthropiccollective.org](http://james.anthropiccollective.org) Work: [Processing Greenbelt 2009 – James Stewart](http://jystewart.net/process/) ---
**Author:** ![RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8491ac/32.png) [@RJRJRJ](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/RJRJRJ)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2007, 6:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/google-maps-plugin-which-one/87129/6 "2007-03-02T18:34:13Z")
James S. wrote: > On Feb 28, 2007, at 6:53 AM, RJ wrote: > > > From what I can tell it looks like Cartpgrapher is simpler in terms of > > setup and functionality (which could be a benefit here) but I was > > wondering if anyone had any real-world experience with them both and > > could recommend one over the other. > > I’ve used YM4R\_Mapstraction and been very pleased with it. While I > primarily work with google maps it’s nice to know I could easily > switch over to another mapping system should I need to. > > I wrote up my experience a few months ago at: > > [Abstracting mapping with YM4R – James Stewart](http://jystewart.net/process/archives/2006/09/abstracting-mapping-) > with-ym4r/ > > James. Cheers James. I also recently saw the annoucement of geokit on blog.rubyonrails, while not directly related to mapping it does have some interesting distance calculation functions using lat/lng. Have you guys tried using these with ym4r / spacial adapter / georuby code? RJ