Best way to do a geographical search?

[Sleidia]

Hello,

I have to design a search form that will have to display a listing of properties depending on their location ( country, region and city ).

The main issue is the fact that the site will be in several languages which means that all the locations will have to be translated too.

To me, it looks like an impossible task to define in advance all the countries, regions and cities in all these languages.

First question :
Do you think such a library with all the worldwide cities already exists so that I could create an autocomplete field a la

http://www.booking.com

within minutes?
I see that cities are all translate in their script.
(ex: Vienna becomes Wien or Vienne depending on what you type).

Second question :
Do you think it would be a good idea to let properties publishers enter the location names themselves in the database? I mean, this would move all the work on their side but it would make it difficult to have an efficient search function since they would propably type the same city with different spellings or worse, with spelling mistakes.

Third question :
I thought that maybe I should try to build a mapplet (

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/mapplets/basics.html#GLatLng

) that would let users choose an area on a map so that the search form use the coordinates of the map boundaries in order to find stored coordinates that are inside.
Do you think it is feasible? The good thing with that option is that we get rid of the location names in multiple languages/spellings. We only use coordinates.

So, what should I do?

Many many thanks to the ones who will provide me with some helpful advice.

Cheers

 

[Bong]

If possible, I would use a pull down menu rather than user entry anyway.

Let's review: your user will enter (in whatever language) a country, region, city. Then your code will search a database to find the properties? What language is the database in?

I would start with the language you're comfortable in and get what you want working in that language alone. Chances are, you will have enough challenges to deal with. Then ask yourself what you expect a user to do: enter the name of a place that is not his/her own in his/her own language? or enter the place name in it's (his/her) own native form? If the latter then each place only needs 2 references: the "standard" (presumably English but that's my own prejudice) and the native name. That is, Spain, say would be "Spain" and "Espana" but would not need however you say "Spain" in Turkish.

_________________
Bob Rashkin