php-googleplaces

PHP Wrapper for the Google Places API.

Origins

Simply put, when I Googled “php google places” I was presented with Google-Places---PHP-. I attempted to use it, and it was fine as I was able to make it work, but there seemed to be a huge assumption that you already knew a lot of the quirks of the Google Places API.

I did not fit into this assumption and set out to built my own wrapper with a heavy focus on sanity checking inputs, utilizing the magical parts of PHP (reads: you interact directly with the object as you would the API) and avoiding setter methods as they were put here by the devil.

I opted not to fork because I was going to change too much and I highly doubt my pull requests would have even been accepted.

Installation

The preferred installation is via composer. First add the following to your composer.json

"require": {
    "joshtronic/php-googleplaces": "dev-master"
}

Then run composer update

Usage

Getting started

$google_places = new joshtronic\GooglePlaces('_YOUR_API_KEY_');

Search nearby, ranked by prominence

$google_places->location = array(-33.86820, 151.1945860);
$google_places->radius   = 800;
$results                 = $google_places->nearbySearch();

Search nearby, ranked by distance

$google_places->location = array(-33.86820, 151.1945860);
$google_places->rankby   = 'distance';
$google_places->types    = 'restaurant'; // Requires keyword, name or types
$results                 = $google_places->nearbySearch();

Second page of search nearby results

$google_places->pagetoken = $results['next_page_token'];
$page2_results            = $google_places->nearbySearch();

Radar search

$google_places->location = array(-33.86820, 151.1945860);
$google_places->radius   = 800;
$google_places->types    = 'restaurant'; // Requires keyword, name or types
$results                 = $google_places->radarSearch();

Place details

$google_places->reference = '#reference#'; // Reference from search results
$details                  = $google_places->details();

Subradius search

Every method has a $google_places->subradius property, as to broad the search into smaller areas and get around Google's results limit of only 60 places per search.

The subradius must be at least 200 meters and must divide evenly into radius (eg. for a 2000 radius, a valid use of the subradius would be 200, 400, 1000; but not 670, 1100 etc).

Example:

$google_places->location  = array(-33.86820, 151.1945860);
$google_places->radius    = 800;
$google_places->subradius = 400; // 400m subradius
$results                  = $google_places->radarSearch();

More details on the subradius here: https://github.com/joshtronic/php-googleplaces/issues/5

The Future

The project that I created this library for is now defunct so I’m not actively using it or hacking on it. That being said, if there’s something you want to see included or you find a bug, just open an issue or grow a pair and fork, hack and send a pull request ;)