Grails, jQuery, and Yahoo Maps

I recently completed a new NetCenter365 feature that uses Yahoo Maps to show the location of all current customers. Here's a screenshot:


I really appreciate Yahoo's "Maps Web Services" which include a helpful geolocation service.

First, we map out HQ with:

 var map = new YMap(document.getElementById('map'));
 map.addTypeControl(); map.addZoomLong(); map.addPanControl();
 map.setMapType(YAHOO_MAP_REG);

 var hq = new YGeoPoint(HQ.latitude, HQ.longitude); 
 map.drawZoomAndCenter(hq, 11); 

Then we use grails and jquery to loop through every customer and fire off the following ajax requests:

 var url = '${createLink(controller: "location", action: "latlong")}' + "/";

 <g:each var="account" in="${accounts}">
  $.getJSON(url + ${account.id}, function(x) { 
    var pt = new YGeoPoint(x.latitude, x.longitude); 
    var m = new YMarker(pt); 
    m.addAutoExpand('${account.name.encodeAsJavaScript()}');
    map.addOverlay(m); 
  });
 </g:each>

The heart of the location/latlong method uses Yahoo's geolocation services. Here's a snippet of the groovy code:

 def geocoder = "http://local.yahooapis.com/MapsService/V1/geocode?appid=${APPID}"
 if (account.line1) geocoder += "&street=" + URLEncoder.encode(account.line1);
 if (account.city) geocoder += "&city=" + URLEncoder.encode(account.city);
 if (account.state) geocoder += "&state=" + account.state;
 if (account.zip) geocoder += "&zip=" + account.zip;

 def xml = geocoder.toURL().text
 def records = new XmlParser().parseText(xml);
 location.latitude = records.Result[0].Latitude.text()
 location.longitude = records.Result[0].Longitude.text()

Performance wise, the map pops up quite quickly and the markers appear in rapid procession. This is aided by caching Lat/Long info to minimize geolocation requests.