Back in May 2010 I wrote a three-part article series titled Building a Store Locator ASP.NET Application Using Google
Maps API, which showed how to build a simple store locator application using ASP.NET and the Google Maps API. The application consisted of two ASP.NET pages. In the first page, the user was prompted to enter an address, city, or postal code (screen shot).
On postback, the user-entered address was fed into the Google Maps API’s geocoding service to determine whether the address, as entered, corresponded to known latitude and longitude coordinates. If it did, the user was redirected to the second page with the address information passed through the querystring. This page then queried the database to find nearby stores and listed them in a grid and as markers on a map (screen shot).
Since the WebForms store locator application was published, several readers have emailed me to ask for an ASP.NET MVC version. I recently decided to port the existing WebForms application to ASP.NET MVC. This article, the first in a two-part series, walks through creating the ASP.NET MVC version of the store locator application and pinpoints some of the more interesting and challenging aspects. This article examines creating the ASP.NET MVC application and building the functionality for the user to enter an address from which to find nearby stores. Part 2 will examine how to show a grid and map of the nearby stores. Read the entire article, Implementing the Store Locator Application Using ASP.NET MVC by clicking here.