The Bakery Everything CakePHP

The site was developed to allow as much flexibility as possible and features a customizable permissions system that allows a map owner to control the way information is presented on their maps. Visitors to a map on the site (once registered) can interact with maps by adding their own content, which includes comments, ratings, photos and Youtube Videos.

An example a public map which requires moderation:

As well as public or community maps, a user can create a personal or even a private (non-viewable) map that is only available to map members. Public maps are usually a free-for-all where all registered users can contribute. Community maps on the other hand would usually require moderation before content appears on the map. By default, the map owner is the sole moderator, although other map members can also be assigned as a moderator.

Once a map has been created, or a registered user has become a member of a map, they are free to start adding (or suggesting) Hotspots (map markers). Each Hotspot on a map represents a “node” that is nested within a typical CAKE category heirarchy. Each node also forms the basis of of static (entry pages) which are designed to funnel traffic back to the main map view...

The nodes are parsed onto the map using JavaScript where they can be edited through the map interface. As mentioned before, owners (and map members) can add text, images and videos. The nodes are also present on the map menu (Jquery tabs) which can be used navigate through the various Hotspots and locations on the map. Controls within the map interface also provide another way for visitors to the site to sort and view content.

The permissions system which allows all of this to happen smootly is built around the CAKE user admin / user module which is also the foundation of the custom inter-site messaging system which we had a 3rd party build for us. Working in CAKE meant that it was a breeze to outsource components of the site to other developers.

MAPME.com also makes use of CAKE pages, and nearly every other part of the framework (pagination, all path assignment, headings, meta data, filtering, RSS etc). In particular the CAKE Test Suite, Pagination and Caching features where particularly useful;

The test suite available with CakePHP was an absolute life-saver during development. With such a complex map interface to manage with data flowing in every imaginable direction, it was vital to have a quick and easy way of running diagnostic tests on the various critical systems - Since this was the first site we'd built using CakePHP, we developed the use of the test suite slightly later in the development, but from experience I'd now say "test quickly, test often" It'll take a bit longer, but you'll thank yourself in the long run, especially when you're staring bleary eyed at non-functional code at 3am!

Pagination provided a wonderfully simple way for us to present data to the users, even through an AJAX interface - on the map itself, you can view lists of comments, videos, images, and each of these can be dynamically loaded from the server with a list of page options.

One of the areas focused on later in development was site optimization, and the Cake cache was a hugely important tool here. Especially on the main index pages, we managed to reduce the average number of database queries down by a huge factor using the cache to store pre-fetched data. Using the cache for the map data was a little trickier, and not always applicable, since we have the option of allowing a user to select from a wide range of filter options, and so this data has to be created upon every request.

If you have any questions about implementation of CAKE with Google Maps, then please submit your questions through the helpdesk, the guys at MAPME will be happy to help you out.

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